THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster (5 page)

2. Fouke Lore

Birth of a Monster

A creature resembling what came to be known as the Fouke Monster first came to the attention of local officials in 1946, although it wasn’t widely reported at the time. Not until the mid-1960s did encounters with some sort of peculiar animal began to occur with any frequency around the Boggy Creek area, but even these did not receive widespread attention. During that era, the term “Fouke Monster” was not yet used to identify the animal among the locals. It wasn’t until the early 1970s that the small town called Fouke became the nationwide focal point and namesake for the hair-covered beast now referred to as the Fouke Monster, or sometimes as the “Boggy Creek Monster.” It was then that the monster gained real popularity and sank its claws, so to speak, into the media. Newspapers such as the
Arkansas Gazette
,
Texarkana Gazette
,
Texarkana Daily News
, and Little Rock’s
Dispatch
began to run stories on the various reports. These were eventually picked up by the Associated Press and United Press International and transmitted to newspapers across the nation, drawing an unprecedented level of attention to the small town.

The first of these reports, considered to be the starting point for the monster’s media age, appeared in the May 3, 1971 edition of the
Texarkana Gazette
. The article, written by journalist Jim Powell, told of a hair-raising experience reported by the Ford and Taylor families, both of whom had recently moved to the north side of Fouke about five miles from the infamous Boggy Creek. The climactic incident, which followed several consecutive nights of strange happenings, took place after nightfall on Saturday, May 1.

FOUKE FAMILY TERRORIZED BY HAIRY MONSTER

“I was moving so fast I didn’t stop to open the door, I just ran through it.”

This was the statement of Bobby Ford, 25, of Rt. 1, Box 220, Texarkana, Ark., Sunday morning after an unidentified “creature” attacked a house about 10 miles south of Texarkana on U.S. Highway 71.

Ford was taken to St. Michael Hospital where he was treated for scratches and mild shock and released.

“We have lived here only five days and I think we are going to move now,” Patricia Ford, 22, Bobby’s sister-in-law said. “The thing has been to the house three times now.”

The “creature” was described by Ford as being about seven feet tall and about three feet wide across the chest. “At first I thought it was a bear but it runs upright and moves real fast. It is covered with hair,” he said.

Ford, his brother Don Ford and Charles Taylor saw the creature several times shortly after midnight Saturday and shot at it seven times with a shotgun.

The incident was utterly bizarre and frightening to the families, but apparently this wasn’t the first time the creature had been lurking around the house. Earlier that week the wives had heard something walking on the porch. On Friday night it tried to break into the house.

The article continued:

Elizabeth Ford said she was sleeping in the front room of the frame house when, “I saw the curtain moving on the front window and a hand sticking through the window. At first I thought it was a bear’s paw but it didn’t look like that. It had heavy hair all over it and it had claws. I could see its eyes. They looked like coals of fire ... real red,” she said. “It didn’t make any noise. Except you could hear it breathing.”

Ford said they spotted the creature in back of the house with the aid of a flashlight. “We shot several times at it then and then called Ernest Walraven, constable of Fouke. He brought us another shotgun and a stronger light. We waited on the porch and then saw the thing closer to the house. We shot again and thought we saw it fall. Bobby, Charles and myself started walking to where we saw it fall,” he said.

About that time, according to Don Ford, they heard the women in the house screaming and Bobby went back.

“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 only thing I could think about was to get out of there. The thing was breathing real hard and his eyes were about the size of a half dollar and real red.

“I finally broke away and ran around the house and through the front door. I don’t know where he went,” Bobby Ford said.

At that point, everyone in the house saw it move rapidly into the field next to the house and then it was gone. Constable Walraven was called back to the scene at 12:35 a.m. where he promptly searched the area. He did not find any trace of the strange creature. It had simply vanished into the dark woods behind the house.

With the coming of daylight, the men could investigate more thoroughly. They found pieces of metal around the bottom of the house that had been “ripped away.” They also noted window damage and scratches on the front porch. In the soil around the house, they discovered curious tracks, which may have been left by the creature. Whatever it was appeared to have only three toes, which was puzzling since this is not characteristic of any known bipedal creatures.

The following day, May 4, a reprise of the story was printed in the
Arkansas Gazette
. The article read, in part:

Bobby Ford, 25, who said he was attacked by a “large, hairy creature” at his home was treated at a hospital here early Sunday for scratches and shock.

Ford, of Fouke, a small Miller County community 15 miles southeast of here told county officials and Fouke Constable Ernest Walraven that about midnight Saturday a creature poked its paw through a hole in a window.

Ford said he and three other adults chased what they described as a large, hairy animal into a wooded area behind the house.

Later, Ford said something kicked in the back door and they again saw the creature behind the house. As he was returning to his house after chasing the creature, he said the animal knocked him down. Ford said he escaped and ran into the house.

Walraven and county officials searched the area Sunday and said they found several large tracks.

It is important to include the complete text of these articles rather than merely summarize the story, since it more accurately conveys the flat, matter-of-fact tone in which it was reported at the time. Devoid of modern-day cynicism that usually accompanies such “creature feature news” today—whether in actual newsprint or on television or internet—it is easy to imagine how this struck a chord of fear within the quiet melody of Fouke and the surrounding areas. Not only did Mr. Ford believe he saw a monster, he ended up in the hospital to be treated for injuries and shock!

And this was only the first of such horrifying reports.

The second incident was made public in the May 24, 1971, edition of the
Texarkana Daily News
. This time “a large hairy creature” was seen crossing a road several miles south of Fouke near Boggy Creek, as witnessed by Mr. and Mrs. D.C. Woods Jr., and Mrs. R.H. Sedgass, all citizens of nearby Texarkana. As the group was traveling north on U.S. Highway 71, just seven miles from the Ford house, they saw a thing with “dark long hair” run upright across the road in front of the car and disappear into the darkness beyond. Mr. Woods first thought they were going to collide with the animal, but due to its unusually fast pace, it ran past unharmed. The variety of eerie descriptions given by the witnesses indicated that “it was swinging its arms” as it ran and “looked like a giant monkey.” The group had recently read about the Ford incident, so they were all aware of the monster at the time and even stated that they “thought it was just a hoax.” But after what they saw that night on the lonely stretch of Highway 71, their minds were changed, as was very clear in the article. Mrs. Sedgass was quoted as saying: “Some people don’t think there is anything to it (the monster), but I do,” summing up the feeling that the trio shared.

The Fords may have been newcomers to the area, but the Woods were well known and respected citizens. While many of the locals were suspicious of the Fords’ tale, they were hard pressed to explain away the Woods’ sighting. The Miller County Sheriff at the time, Leslie Greer, was quoted as saying, “I know those people, and they were very reliable and very truthful. I don’t know what they saw, but I do believe they saw something.”

Both of these original monster articles were written by Jim Powell, who could not have imagined he would become a major player in a legend. At the time he was a hard working journalist who was simply covering a bizarre story. But his diligent effort and straightforward presentation of the incidents were just the right combination to spark major public interest in the “monster.”

“I just wrote what people told me,” Powell explained when I spoke to him on the phone. Powell still resides in Texarkana. “They didn’t editorialize like they do now. They just printed the story.”

The morning after the Fords had their terrifying encounter, Powell got a call from Dave Hall, news director for Texarkana’s KTFS radio station. I also spoke with Hall during my research. He gave me a rundown of how it all started: “A doctor friend of mine called that morning [May 2] and said he had a guy down there at the hospital that had been attacked by a monster. He was scared so bad he was in shock. So I called Jim and said ‘let’s go down there and see what this is all about.’”

They wasted no time in getting an address for the incident and hurried to the scene. When the two men arrived, they found the Fords in a state of frenzy, packing their belongings into a U-Haul in a tremendous hurry to leave town. It was certainly odd since the family had only moved there less than a week earlier.

Several area law enforcement officials were on the scene along with a throng of onlookers that was growing by the minute. Powell retraced the events of the previous night, trying to sort out what had happened. In our phone conversation, Powell told me that “[Bobby Ford] definitely thought he was being attacked. He fought with something, then ran around the porch, and nearly jumped right through the front door. He was really afraid.”

The actual house, pictured in 1969, where the Ford incident occurred.
The Fords rented the property from the Simmons family.
(Courtesy of the Miller County Historical Society)

Powell and Hall searched the immediate area for evidence. There was a freshly plowed field behind the house, so the men looked for tracks where the Fords said they had seen some glowing eyes. “We went into the area behind the house and saw unusual footprints, and small saplings broken off,” Hall told me. “We never saw any blood, although the people said they fired several shots and thought they hit it.”

The
Texarkana Daily News
and
Texarkana Gazette
both published a follow-up article in the days following, theorizing that the mysterious visitor may have been something less than monstrous. The article, which includes Powell’s first reference to the “Fouke Monster” by name, shifts the blame to a wild cat. Its headline read: “Monster may be mountain lion” and included the following statement: “’We think now it might have been a big cat, like a mountain lion or puma,’ Don Ford said Monday while sitting on his porch watching people wander through his fields looking for a trace of the ‘Fouke Monster.’”

Rumors also circulated that the perpetrator had actually been a horse. Several sources agreed that an old horse had been seen lumbering around the area of Highway 71 where the Ford house was located. It often trampled through gardens and approached houses at night. Some claim that the old horse was found dead a short distance from the Ford house the following day, having been killed by a shotgun blast. However, other sources deny that such a horse was ever found. Either way, it does seem odd that no hoofprints were noted around the Ford house, nor was a blood trail ever found.