1
(frog croaking)
- [Narrator] In 1972 an
eerie abomination made it's
first appearance on theater
screens across America.
It was the subject of a movie titled
The Legend of Boggy Creek.
The creature at the heart of this legend
was dubbed The Boggy Creek Monster.
While a nation came to meet this beast
for the first time in the early 1970's,
residents in the bottom
lands of southern Arkansas
barely batted an eye at
it's cinematic debut.
They knew something
the rest of the country
was just beginning to grasp.
See, the Legend of Boggy
Creek wasn't just a legend.
For decades, reports of a huge manlike
hair covered beast who wandered the swamps
and waterways had seeped
into local folklore.
While the excitement of the film
appealed to the general public,
those who had actually encountered
the monster for themselves
were haunted by it's reality.
The reality was a riddle.
The reality was terrifying.
(fast paced music)
(ominous music)
This is Fouke Arkansas.
I didn't grow up here,
but when I was just a boy
this place captured my imagination.
I had only seen it on the theater screen,
but I had often traveled
to such small towns
with my father as we camped and hunted
throughout Texas and Arkansas.
They were out of the way places.
Quiet monuments of rural America
tucked away from the
hectic buzz of city life.
A peaceful place to raise a family.
And for a lot of people,
that's all Fouke ever was.
In the 70's Fouke would
gain notoriety however,
thanks to the release of
The Legend of Boggy Creek.
I saw the movie at the
time with my family,
and like a lot of kids
fascinated by monsters
I was thrilled.
The movie has since become something
of a B movie staple.
But it's magic and mystery
has always remained with me.
A mystery I wanted to help solve.
I'm Lyle Blackburn.
A few years ago I wrote a book titled
The Beast of Boggy Creek.
The book takes an in depth
look at the mysteries
surrounding the town of Fouke.
And in particular, it's
most famous citizen,
the Boggy Creek Monster.
For people in southern Arkansas,
the legend of Boggy Creek was more
than just a movie.
It was an introduction to their home.
An area often overlooked by outsiders.
A land teeming with
wildlife, natural beauty,
hidden mysteries, and countless legends.
Fouke is a quiet little community
tucked away in the corner
of southwest Arkansas.
Just 20 miles from the city of Texarkana,
60 miles north of Shreveport Louisiana.
Despite it's proximity to relatively
large population centers,
the remote wilderness that surrounds Fouke
makes it feel like a world away.
- Fouke Arkansas is located in the
southwest corner of the state
of Arkansas in Miller County.
Miller County is the only
county in the state of Arkansas,
or one of the two counties
in the state of Arkansas
that is separated from the
rest of the state by water.
Red River carves it out away
from the rest of the state.
- This area, we sometimes look at
as the lost county of the
lost state of Arkansas.
- It's a small country town.
Slow slow paced.
Small town that we have here has got
plentiful (stutters) wildlife around here.
When you step out in the woods
you experience nature.
- [Lyle] Fouke was
founded in the late 1800's
by a group of 7th Day Adventists
looking for religious sanctuary.
A place where the devil and his minions
could not reach them.
The rugged lands of Miller
County which surrounded it
were often the back drop
for shadowy activities.
Like so many areas of the deep south
it was home to moonshiners, outlaws,
and other unscrupulous individuals.
Yet Fouke held it's ground
as a faith based community.
Where families can enjoy the
benefits of small town life.
- It is a place in it's history
that was known for outlaws.
And many of them would
hang out in this area
because they could access another state
in less than 15, 20 minutes.
- And the town itself,
Fouke used to be a big place.
We had a train depot, we had a saw mill.
And it was a lot more people down here
then than there is now.
- [Lyle] While Fouke has become known
in modern times for it's monster,
the state of Arkansas has a long
running history with
strange creature reports.
While researching for my book,
I came across numerous articles
glean from newspaper archives that talk
of terrifying encounters
with man-like beings
who lurk in the depths
of the states mountains,
forests, and swamps.
As far back as the
1800's, newspapers carried
tales of these so called wild men.
- They're stories that
come from the early 1900's.
The Indians believed it's
been here the whole time.
Their ancestors lived with
whatever this creature is.
It's second nature to 'em.
- [Lyle] The wild man
descriptions are remarkably
similar to Fouke's monster.
While there are an
abundance of historically
documented sightings connected with Fouke,
stories from the locals
suggest this creature
may have been sighted in the area
as far back as the early 1900's.
- 100 years ago there was
something that happened down here.
It happened to a girl,
she was eight years old.
She's been gone for about 14 years.
She died at the age of 92.
And she didn't tell
anybody anything about this
until she was on her deathbed.
She had been fishing with her
grandparents and her parents.
They all fished right along
the bayou, right through here.
And she had her little cane
pole, what she called it.
She went around a bush and it was squatted
down next to the water.
It was washing it's feet off.
It stood up and she stood face to face
with it within five feet.
She went back and got in the wagon
and she never came back to this area.
- Prior to me ever becoming
a deputy sheriff,
I was hunting one night,
we used to fox hunt.
I was hunting with my father in law
and he relayed a story to me that
they were hunting and all of
a sudden the dogs shut down.
The dogs quit barking, they came to them
who was in the draw between two ridges.
And they couldn't
understand what the problem
might have been but eventually there was
a great big hairy looking monster.
As he referred to it.
A man or whatever.
They didn't give it a name
'cause they didn't know what it was.
Merged out of the woods.
And stood there looking in their area
which they was at the bottom of the draw.
And they had a small weapon with them
and they fired it several
times at the monster.
But into the air hoping to
frighten it but it didn't.
It stood there and walked,
turned around, looked.
Looked like it was looking down at them
and they did not want to leave their area
by themselves on the ridge.
And so they stayed there
for quite some time
they finally went home.
This was prior to me ever becoming
a law enforcement officer.
And the date and time that
it happened I don't know.
The story was told to me probably about
1966, 67, that time period.
So it already happened
some period earlier.
- I graduated in 64 so that's when our
seniors had encountered some
barefooted man on Boggy Creek.
They had two packs of coon
dogs, they'd mix packs.
And on a given night, as
they called or we called
the barefooted man.
'Cause that was the tracks they found.
He killed all the dogs.
And they come school the next day
trying to get a vigilante thing going
to go in there and hunt this
man down on Boggy Creek.
Some of the seniors went,
a couple of us didn't get to go.
We tried but our parents wouldn't let us.
And they never came back with proof
as to who it was or what.
That was our monster dust
as we look back, hindsight.
- [Lyle] On a warm May evening in 1971,
the Boggy Creek monster
took it's first steps
into the public eye.
Those sightings of the creature had been
taking place years before the event
that was about to transpire.
This proved to be the tipping point.
Just after sunset on Saturday May 1st
at a small frame house off of Highway 71
the Ford and Turner families
were just settling in for the night
when they had an experience
that would haunt them
for the rest of their lives.
Elizabeth Ford made the first contact
when she was torn from her peaceful sleep
by a massive hairy hand reaching
through a nearby window.
Behind the hand peering at her
were two red eyes that she said,
"Looked like coals of fire."
The men of the house rushed outside
to meet the thing head on.
Armed with a shotgun and a flashlight
they spotted the creature
and starting shooting.
It fled into the nearby woods.
The family quickly
retreated into the house
where they called the local police.
Headed by Constable Ernest Walraven.
Walraven and a young
deputy named H.L. Phillips
arrived at the Ford house
and found the family shaken.
But they found no
creature on the property.
So they took their leave.
- I know that I arrived there
and Red Walraven who was
the Cosnstable of Fouke
at that time, we both arrived
at about the same time.
It was uncontrollable type of a situation.
There was total panic among the members,
which was several people living there
in the house at that time.
- [Lyle] A short time later the monster
returned to the scene and was greeted
yet again with gunfire
from the terrified family.
While no blood or other
evidence could be found,
the men were insistent
they'd struck the creature
and they had seen it fall.
The incident proceeded to
unfold with more sightings
and a scene that proved terrifying
for audiences when it appeared
in The Legend of Boggy Creek a year later.
Wherein the creature attacked
the youngest of the family, Bobby Ford.
As in real life, the incident resulted
in Ford being taken to a local hospital
where he was treated for
injuries and mild shock.
- They said that Bobby Ford
was definitely involved in some,
something had actually happened to him.
He had wet his britches
or something had happened there
that would cause this get to hurt.
But that he was in a state of,
you know, like shock.
- [Lyle] The Ford incident was documented
by the Texarkana Gazette
in a series of articles
that meticulously retold the encounter.
Much to the Ford's chagrin,
they became the subject
of mockery and ridicule
as the local monster story
was shot down by skeptics.
To make matters worse,
monster hunters turned the Ford home
into a tourist attraction as they searched
the property for signs of the monster.
- And we could look at the area
and see that the area was
disturbed, was tore up.
And it was not something
that was prefabricated
because of the way that they was disturbed
and actually being a lot of people
I could tell that they
themselves were not actors.
That something truly happened there.
And this was the beginning of the
so called Fouke monster in this area.
- [Lyle] As for the Ford's themselves,
they quickly packed up
their things and left Fouke.
Never to return.
(bird chirping)
(loud roar)
(high pitch screaming)
- Shoot him!
(loud gunfire)
(glass shattering)
Fouke was abuzz with the latest news
of the Boggy Creek monster.
Sightings ranged across Miller County
with a number of them
occurring in locations
such as Highway 71, the
Sulphur River Bottoms,
the nearby community of Jonesville,
and along Boggy Creek itself.
Locals and out of towners alike
formed posse's to search for the creature.
Hoping to bring home the head of a monster
to mount on their wall.
As the scene in and around Miller County
turned more chaotic with each passing day,
media coverage of the
Fouke monster increased.
Charles B. Pierce, an
up and coming filmmaker
with an eye out for a good story,
decided the Boggy Creek monster
would be the perfect subject
for his first feature film.
After borrowing money
from a local business man,
he gathered a small
crew and headed to Fouke
to make his movie.
Though it was originally
intended to be a documentary
the film turned out to
be something audiences
had never experienced before.
Equal parts documentary, horror movie,
and nature film, The Legend of Boggy Creek
dramatized the story of
the monster sightings.
It featured non actors,
many of whom played themselves
reenacting their actual
encounters with the beast.
Locals, such as the
Searcy's And the Crabtree's
shared screen time with the creature
that had stalked their family just years
and even months earlier.
- Of course I grew up with it before that.
My family's Crabtree's so you heard a lot
of stories back long
before the actual movie
of The Legend of Boggy Creek came out.
So when my dad would take me to the woods
and put me by a tree,
you prayed for daylight, you really did.
It was quite startling to be out there
by yourself during that time period.
- [Lyle] Made on a shoestring budget
and released entirely independent of major
studio involvement, the
movie was an instant
success in the local region.
Eventually the film secured
theatrical distribution
and went on to play across the country.
It enjoyed a particularly
successful run at drive-ins.
Where it was often paired with other
creature features.
Including those that
focused on a burgeoning
pop culture icon known as Bigfoot.
By the end of the 1970's the film
had earned an estimated
25 million dollars.
An amazing feat for an
independent production
and a first time director.
- They were kind of excited.
It was something different.
The movie came out, we all loaded up
in the back end of a 72 Vega
and we went and watched the movie.
Back then it was a lot of excitement.
The movie had just come out,
it was fresh in everybody's mind.
The sightings up and down 71 Highway
between Texarkana and
Shreveport was almost every day.
Somebody saw something.
And if they didn't see anything
they think they made it up.
- I remember going to the movie myself
and the thing that impressed me was
as I drove up to the movie theater,
there was already a line people
strung all the way around the block.
And I got there 40
minutes before it started.
- [Lyle] Back in Fouke however,
the movie received a mixed
reaction by the towns folk.
What was once a peaceful
out of the way place
was now the scene of a chaotic frenzy.
The movie success brought in waves
of curiosity seekers and monster hunters
who trampled the local countryside.
While some locals
benefited by the tourism,
it was a headache to others.
In one of The Legend of Boggy Creek's
most iconic scenes, the
Searcy home is besieged
by the Fouke the monster over
the course of one evening.
It's an incident I've been fascinated with
since first viewing the film.
But what became of the Searcy's?
Like many of the witnesses featured
in The Legend of Boggy Creek,
the family was subject to ridicule.
And for decades they were
constantly questioned
about their claims.
Of the many witnesses I've spoken to,
the majority are more than a little leery
of speaking publicly
about their experiences.
Mary Beth Searcy,
the family's prime
witness was no different.
As well, many of the
actors featured in the film
were local citizens who had not received
a share of it's bountiful box office.
While the value of such
notoriety was debatable,
it was certain the tiny town
would never be the same.
- People came from all around.
You go down the road there's somebody
standing on the road with a gun
wanting to kill the Fouke monster.
And we still continue to get
these calls, these reports,
but each time we did it
caused a lot of problems.
The problem was actually
the citizen around Fouke,
they go out and look across the field
and there's a bunch of people out there
with guns and stuff.
And so we try to keep as quiet as possible
after this event occurred.
- When the movie came out,
the best way to put it is
it revolutionized the culture
of the city and the area.
- When they made the movie,
half the people shunned it and
half the people embraced it.
So you had a split reaction on
what was actually gonna transpire
while they were making it.
So you had a line of
people ready to be on it.
You had another line of people
ready to walk out the door.
The ones that they did interview
that I saw on the movie, I know in person,
they're credible, they
don't just make stuff up
to be making stuff up.
And if they told ya a
story it's what it was.
They just weren't out there to try
to make a buck off a movie.
- The movie had a response
from all over the US.
From all over the US.
And a lot of people after seeing the movie
wanted answers because they themselves
had experienced something like that.
Something weird.
But it was a wide, they came
from all over the states.
- [Lyle] The Boggy Creek Monster
seems to be a phantom.
Rarely leaving behind
any physical evidence.
But on June 13th 1971,
that would change.
Tracks were found in a local bean field
owned by Willy Smith.
They were unlike any the town folk
had ever seen before or since.
Possessing what appeared
to be just three toes,
the tracks followed a path
out of the bordering forest
across the field, and then
back into the wood line.
I noted the proximity of the field
to the famed Boggy Creek itself
when I visited the location
during one of my research trips.
While the strange tracks do
raise a number of questions,
they were discovered
at just the right time.
Allowing them to become a
feature of Pierce's movie.
But what kind of huge bipedal creature
can carry itself on such
a narrow, three toed foot?
- Actually it was my uncle's field.
It was down there where the
first tracks were found.
It kind of stirred all this up.
(mumbling)
My great uncle.
And I used to pick cotton
on that same bean field.
- I lifted several
tracks out of bean field.
I recall it seems to me probably
about 13 inches three toes.
But I lifted a lot of plastic
casts out of that field.
- My uncle lived down here.
He called my mother.
They got her to bring a
bag of her plaster paris
down to the Smith farm and
mold three of the tracks.
- And what may wreck this a bit
different from the normal thing
is the strides were so far apart.
- And to our knowledge, it's
the only existing print,
the only existing cast
of that year and time.
It had a measure roughly 14 inches.
But the foot does a concave
thing in the dirt, in the sand.
You can see the claws, his
toenails and the area on it.
It still has particles from that time
caught up in the plaster.
- The tracks went from the road
to the other side of the road.
I recall it was too much debris.
Only thing about this was a plowed field.
It went for a short distance
until it went back into
another brushy area.
But from that period over there
was several tracks embedded.
- Part of the evidence
you can't overlook it.
People seeing things, whether they got
physical evidence to show or not.
It convinced me there's more to it
than just talk.
The legend, there's
more than just a legend.
- [Lyle] The footprints
offered a compelling
bit of evidence for the
Boggy Creek monster,
but not proof.
Skeptics were quick to point out
the implausibility of the bizarre tracks.
Still, sightings of the creature
persisted well beyond the movie.
It was the history of the movie
and the search for the truth
that first brought me to Fouke.
It was a place that had such
a huge inspiration on my life.
But what I found was that the sightings
of the creature had not
stopped in the early 1970's
as many came to believe.
People did in fact continue
to see the alleged creature.
One of those people is Will Lunsford.
A boy who had encountered the beast
in the late 1970's and whose life
has been immeasurably change by it.
- What year was that?
- This was 1977 and I was
a senior in high school.
As I said, I didn't expect this day
to be any different than any other day
I'd ever spent down here in my life.
- [Lyle] Speaking with people like Will
is a constant reminder of just how much
the creature can impact
the life of a witness.
For some the encounter becomes a force
that haunts them their whole life.
For Will, it's the driving force
that compels him to
search for the creature
long after he first saw it.
- And the Fouke monster here
and I was not a believer in the creature.
And so like I said,
I didn't expect anything to happen.
- Had you seen the movie prior to this?
- I had seen the movie probably back in
probably 72 or 73 when it came out.
- So that day when you had the encounter,
what were you doing?
Walk me through that.
- [Will] Okay I was down there fishing.
And about the same time it
is right here right now.
And the sun was starting
to set a little bit.
I had a few more pits that I was
wanting to fish and get to.
So as we did that there we
kinda stepped up a little bit
and I came to a crossing of this gas line.
And as I went to cross, I'd
been smelling this nasty smell.
And I thought, "Well that's roadkill."
Because there's always fish.
There's things that be coming
out of the gravel pits.
Animals that have been eaten.
So I didn't think anything about it.
So as I went to cross
the gas line up there
there was something that
just didn't look right.
And I had walked this place
thousands of times before.
And so I kept looking, I'm
like, "Something is not right.
"Something is not right."
Well finally I guess I had sit there
and stared at this thing long enough.
He stepped off the road
into a shadow so to speak
right there behind the tree.
And all of a sudden he's down,
and then all of a sudden he
lifts this bush above his head
and he starts standing up.
And he keeps standing up,
and he keeps standing up
and I thought, bear.
First thing I thought.
Which would have been
frightening in itself.
But then whenever he sit there and I got
a good look at the face I
realized that's not a bear.
And he sit there and looked at me
and I couldn't move.
I wanted to run, I just couldn't run.
And so I sit there and he walks
out in the middle of the trail.
Right here where I'm fishing,
and he just sit there.
And he just stares at me
and he kind of teeters.
Like this right here.
And man I'm just, I can already
feel tears coming down my face.
And so as he stands there
maybe 30 to 40 seconds,
he walks back to the tree.
He pulls the same limb down.
He does what I call skin the cat.
Puts it in his lips, does that.
He walks back out in front of the trail
again there in front of
me and he stands there
and teeters like don't come down here.
This is still my territory.
He sits there maybe
another 20 to 30 seconds.
And man he just whips
and goes into the woods.
And in two steps you don't see him
and in three steps he's gone.
- [Lyle] Will Lunsford's sighting location
is in the heart of what seems to be
the creatures domain.
While there are sightings
along Boggy Creek,
closer to downtown Fouke,
the bulk of them take place
further from civilization.
As development continues
to overtake the land,
it's easy to theorize
that perhaps the creature
is retreating into the
uninhabitable areas outside of town.
Just a few miles west of Fouke lies
the Sulphur River Bottoms.
A vast flood plain that derives it's name
from the Sulphur River.
Encounters there have a
long lingering history
that seems to have been dredged up
from the swamps themselves.
For nearly two centuries stories have
been coming out of
places like Mercer Bayou,
Carter Lake, and Gifford Hills.
Over the years as my research into the
Boggy Creek case continued,
I found myself constantly pulled back
to these locations.
These are the wild places
of southern Arkansas.
Acres and acres of
untamed, overgrown lands
flooded by the black murky
waters of the bayou's.
- Of course now that the bottoms here
run Mercy Bayou and Sulphur bottoms
that remains pretty much the same
as it's always been.
'Cause it's just uninhabitable.
There's a lot of land
no ones ever set foot
on I'm sure about that.
- This area around here in Fouke,
an abundance of animals.
Any big predator would
just have a field day here.
I mean hogs are easy.
They're there for the taking I think.
And you're seeing more and more signs
of dead animals in the woods, bones.
You know that it takes a large predator
to take down such a size of an animal.
- [Lyle] The bottom lands are fed
by numerous waterways and of these
none is more infamous
than Boggy Creek itself.
But for all it's notoriety,
Boggy Creek is a little
more than a small tributary
that snakes through Miller County.
This may seem underwhelming given
it's historic prominence in a famous film.
However, tracking the sheer number
of sightings that take
place along the waterway
makes it significant.
The creek meanders west of Fouke under
major roadways, through farms,
fields, and dense forests,
and eventually spills into Days Creek.
So did the film make Boggy
Creek part of the legend?
Or did it's legendary status
date back even further?
I came to find out that Willy Smith,
the same Willy Smith
who owned the bean field
where the tracks were found
told a reporter for the
Victoria Advocate newspaper
that his sister had encountered
the creature near Boggy Creek.
As far back as 1908.
In 1955 Smith claimed that he himself
had been haunted by the
creature near his house.
Which not surprisingly, was
situated along Boggy Creek.
- Days Creek and Boggy Creek have remained
pretty well the same.
And it is a creek where
there are a lot of snakes,
turtles, beaver, fish, gar,
all kinds of wildlife of that nature.
- The stories coming out of Mercer Bayou
and along Boggy Creek are a lot more
believable when you sit and listen to 'em.
- Most of it was in the Boggy Creek area.
The secluded part of Miller county.
We had one couple that was fishing on
Sulphur River and heard something
coming through the woods.
And saw it go down into the briars
and debris and stuff that
had gone up on the bank.
We saw it go down in there
they come out and actually just disappear.
They said when they
saw it they immediately
turned and started going back up.
But they described it as
a great big monster, as they put it.
Just on the little (talks too fast).
Now these are, you know,
just two people fishing.
- It was November the 2nd 2011.
And I was down here at Thornton Wells.
And I forgot my game
camera down at the bayou.
We had a big storm that night.
So my wife calls me and says
"You need to go get your
camera out of the bayou."
So I come down to the
bayou to get my camera.
I was on my way to military duty,
so I was still in my ACU's, my Army stuff.
I come down here and get out of the truck,
walk about 60 yards and something
had gotten between, or was already here,
between me and my truck.
And I got a knock, it knocked three times.
It was in sequence.
Nothing sporadic.
It was kinda freaky.
- [Lyle] The Legend of Boggy Creek
may not have passed into legend at all
if not for the Crabtree's.
As a kid I was well aware of the name
thanks to the movie and
it's musical interlude
which sings hey Travis Crabtree.
The Crabtree family
had been local to Fouke
for over a century now.
They lived and worked
in the same wild land
that some speculate the Boggy
Creek monster calls home.
Ad far back as the mid 1950's,
members of the family claim to have had
sightings of the beast.
None of the Crabtree's were more tied
to the Fouke monster than Smokey Crabtree.
- [Smokey] I was born on
the banks of Sulphur River.
Seven miles from a
little town called Fouke.
They was seven children in the family.
My dad died when I was five years old.
Left mother with seven children
to raise there on the bank
of the river in the woods.
Seven miles from the
closest grocery store.
But we growed up in the
woods with the animals.
Now the creature that we've all been after
for 30 or 40 years.
Some people called it the Bigfoot.
Some of 'em call it the Fouke monster.
Some of 'em call it the creature.
But it'll take a long time
for 'em to ever outdo an animal.
- I grew up with the Crabtree boys.
One of my best friends was
one of the Crabtree boys.
His brothers were supposed to be the ones
that had seen it then.
And I take very much stock in what
they say is being the
truth as they see it.
- [Lyle] Smokey's son Lynn had one of the
most legendary sightings.
In 1965 when Lynn was just 14 years old
he encountered the
creature on the backside
of their property while hunting squirrel
in the woods that bordered Crabtree lake.
It was early evening when Lynn heard
what he thought sounded
like the family dog
caught up in a barbed wire fence.
- [Smokey] All at once his
dog got hung up on a fence.
But the dog sounded like
it was killing itself
so he figured I better get outside
and try to get the dog out of there.
So he jumped up and
started running out there.
And when he got to where he could see,
it was that damn creature
making that racket
like a dog hung up in the fence.
And he was standing at the water's edge.
His full back wasn't to the boy.
And the boy was now about
60 steps away from him.
And nothing, nothing between
him and that critter.
He could see the side of his head,
and part of his back,
and all down one side.
And he said that that thing was
letting off body language
that told him he was highly pissed off.
And his arms hanging down,
his arms was longer than his legs.
The way he was crouched.
And he said it looked somewhere between
an animal and a man.
And he said sure enough
the thing did give up.
And he'd walk up that old road.
The way he come down he might not ever
seen the boy standing out there.
Walked toward that boy looking down.
And he smelled the boy before he seen him.
And he stopped real short
and he went to breathing all in the air.
And directly that joker spotted him.
And he didn't take his
eyes off of him again.
He kept smelling the air
and he kept bending over
farther and farther.
He wanted to know what that kid was.
But he didn't wanna get any closer.
He said the thing looked
enough like an animal
he wasn't fixing to talk to it.
But it looked enough like a man
that he was scared to shoot it.
So he stood up and got to shuffling.
And so then the thing just started slowly
easing on out toward him.
Had hair all over his body.
He said he knew he couldn't hurt it
with it's shotgun, squirrel shot.
So he shot for it's eyes hoping to
make it leave him alone.
Or damage it's eye sight.
Act like it never even heard the shot.
He emptied his gun, shot him a third time.
Then he turned around and
started walking looking back
and loading his gun.
And then the thing wasn't chasing him
but it was moving faster.
Kinda keeping the same distance.
He said, the first thing you know
he was loading his gun while he was shot.
And he said when he got his gun loaded
his fear overtook him.
And he never did stop
and make a stand anymore.
He headed for home and when he got home
he was completely panicked.
- On the Crabtree side,
them boys lived in the woods.
That's where all their food came from.
And most of the time if they saw something
they're not gonna tell
anybody outside of the family.
So it you getting a story from them
it's because they didn't
understand what they saw.
If they understood it,
a lot of times you wouldn't hear about it.
- I hate you tell you,
my great grandmother
told me about this long
before the movie came out.
She would tell usshe was a Crabtree.
She was married to a Jones.
And several of the
characters during that movie
were related to her and to my mother.
They were tight lipped.
Have y'all ever met the Crabtree's?
Or the Jones', they are
tight lipped people.
They keep a lot of stuff to their self.
They don't tell a lot of things.
So if you wasn't hearing it from them,
most of the stuff you couldn't believe it.
- [Lyle] While Lynn had the actual
encounter with the creature,
and Travis went on to enjoy
notoriety as the star of a feature film,
their father, Smokey, was the one
who kept the legend alive.
Despite a dramatic disagreement
with Charles Pierce for
the compensation movie,
Smokey never could outrun
the specter of the monster.
He pinned three books on the subject,
appeared in documentaries
and television news
segments discussing it.
And was generally acknowledged to be the
authority On the Fouke creature.
Ironically, despite his
significant association
with the monster,
Smokey never had a sighting for himself.
In 2016 Smokey Crabtree passed away.
Right up until his death he was still
searching for the beast that had
haunted him for much of his life.
Among those who have crossed paths
with the Boggy Creek
monster I've found few
more credible than Terry Sutton.
He came to me with a story
unlike any I'd heard.
Not simply because he had
seen the creature lurking
in the woods behind his home,
but because the lasting
effects were apparent.
Add to this that Terry had never spoken
publicly about his sighting
prior to my interview.
And you have a unique
story that stands apart
from many of the Fouke encounters.
- It was in February in 1982.
- I think that was definitely one of the
significant things when I talked to you
about the date of your experience,
because that was sort of showed
that the thing continued.
When the media frenzy had stopped
and all that moved on, yet
sightings still occurred.
So it was a significant point and
one of the first in the 80's.
Because the 70's are what a lot
of people's impression were.
Wow that was a movie and a bunch of people
had sightings then and
it all just went away.
Maybe the media, and the
press, and the movie went away,
but for somebody who
lived here it continued.
- When you look back on your life
it kinda runs in fast forward
and there's a lot of fuzzy areas.
Majority of your life is kind of fuzzy.
But there's certain
events that are very vivid
and that day is still kind of replays
like a movie in my head, it's very vivid.
So I came down here, the boat was parked
on the end where it always was.
Got in the boat, went around,
and then fished up in the net.
At the end of the day
I was coming back out.
And right about this corner here
when I came around the bend is when
I noticed that the creature
was walking down toward the levy
and then down toward the creek.
I stopped obviously and watched him
walk on to the levy.
And then didn't move until I saw him
disappear over the hill.
It was probably about, it
was roughly seven feet tall.
He was thin, had black hair.
Had noticeably poor posture.
Walked slumped over, shoulders forward,
and a very long stride.
- [Lyle] Terry's father, Lloyd,
knows as much about Fouke
and it's history as anyone.
An amateur photographer,
Lloyd raised Terry
to be a man who could
handle things for himself.
And neither of them are given
to tall tales or hysteria.
Lloyd played a key role in establishing
the validity of Terry's story.
While he himself has
never seen the creature,
his memories of the night Terry did
are as vivid as if he had
encountered it for himself.
- And Terry had just got to
the house, when I drove up.
And he came out on the patio there
and he had his hands over his face.
I said, "Terry what's the matter?"
He said, "Daddy I just saw
the monster down at the pond."
I already believed it before he saw it.
I talked to a lot of people
who have seen it before.
He made a believer out of a lot of people.
Because he's so reliable,
they know that he would not make something
like that up.
- Obviously for someone
who talks to people
like this frequently,
it's not isolated to any one person.
This is something everybody
has to face and come out.
And of course I appreciate you
taking me through this because
I know it's a personal event and something
that can have lasting
effects over the years.
- In reflection, it's just a fact
of something that happened.
And even taking all the emotion out of it
it's just a fact of something
that happened in your life.
It's an event in your life.
And whether people believe it
or not is their own choice.
But you can't deny the fact of what I saw.
- [Lyle] The Suttons live in the
small community of Jonesville,
where in the 1960's a number of sightings
of what was then dubbed The
Jonesville Monster occurred.
It's perhaps no coincidence that so many
of these early occurrences took place
from the relative safety of a car.
Typically, the driver sees little more
than a large black shape crossing the road
as it darts into the woods at high speed.
It makes sense that so many sightings
occur on roads.
Any animal traversing the dense forest
and endless swamps that
cover southern Arkansas
must eventually make their way across
the black top gravel or dirt pathways
that crisscross the state.
As far back as 1955,
two Jonesville residents
recounted seeing a creature
that, as they put it,
walked like a man but was
too hairy to be a man,
crossed the road as they
were driving one night.
In 1965 a young Fouke boy claimed to see
a large hairy beast while
walking on a dirt road.
The boy went on to say that the being
had attempted to chase him before
disappearing into the woods.
On year later a school bus driver saw
the same creature in
the early morning hours.
During 1971 several sightings of a monkey
or a gorilla like creature came in.
One of the most memorable occurred just
weeks after the infamous Ford incident.
In this case three people
saw the alleged creature
cross the road very near Boggy Creek.
It seems that simply driving from
one destination to
another in Miller County
can lead to an encounter
with the legend itself.
- Back then it was a lot of excitement.
The movie had just come out.
It's fresh in everybody's mind.
And sightings up and down 71 Highway
between Texarkana and Shreveport.
Just almost every day
someone saw something.
If they didn't see anything
I think they made it up.
- One report was from actually a
deputy sheriff and his family.
They drove near Boggy Creek,
they coming traveling north on 71.
And one of the family members noticed
something standing on
the west side of the road
and alerted the driver.
And he started slowing down
because it was unusual.
Just then all of a sudden
it got up and ran across.
In a matter of a few
yards in front of 'em.
And said he was a large, big,
gorilla looking like thing.
And he said he went across
and bounded over a fence
and just kept going.
- And a year and a half ago
somebody told me you
need to talk to somebody.
I said, "This guy, he's like
one of my best friends."
He lives in south Texas.
I called him and I said, "You
need to tell me a story."
He said, "You know
Gifford Hills, that place
"we parked at all the
time on south state line?"
I said "Oh yeah, I know it well."
He said, "I started walking
down that road one morning,
"and I got about 50 yards down that road.
"And I look up and there's something
"standing in the middle of that road.
"And I stopped."
I said, "You know me, I
got guns, I got pistols,
"I got my shotgun, I'm ready to go.
"I'm talking to it.
"I said "Who are you?!"
"It didn't answer.
"I said, "Hey man I got a gun."
He said, "I'll kill ya."
And that's exactly how he talked.
He said, all of a sudden
it wasn't one thing there
there was two things standing there.
And it just slightly just
strolled across the road.
- It was September the 25th 2011.
I had went over to a friend of mines house
to do some school work.
It was probably getting
close around midnight.
I got ready, packed my books up,
packed my laptop up.
And went outside to put it all in my car.
I noticed whenever I went outside,
that it was just kind
of strangely just quiet.
No crickets, nothing.
I get down her driveway
and I turn on to 206
and then took a right and turned onto 40.
Headed towards 10 which
is towards my house.
And as I came around the
curb and came up the hill,
there was a pasture over here
and they had been rolling some hay up
to get ready to be moved.
Well there was a couple
rolls out in the field.
I don't know if it like turned around
or was squatted and came up,
but something caught my
eye over in this field.
And as my lights shined on it,
I could see like the greenish color,
like a deer would whenever you see a deer.
And I noticed it.
The roll of hay was about five foot.
Whenever I noticed it, where it was at,
the roll of hay was right here on it.
As I seen it, it's just like it happened
in an instant, so fast
and so gracefully almost.
It runs across the field
and darts off in front of my car.
I slam on my brakes.
Literally from here to here.
I could see the monster plain as day.
It was like in a running man position.
I could see it's feet, it's hair.
It was more like a course
looking dark brown.
It had leaves all over the back of it.
I could see the muscles movement
of like the legs, the muscle
structure of the legs,
and the arms, and around
the back and stuff.
It was, pretty massive.
And it just crosses the road into
like a brush and barbed wire fence.
Frightened me yeah, excited, just kind of
a little bit excited and a
little bit of frightened.
Because I mean you don't know whether
it could be mad or, what.
- My encounter with this thing
occurred on a day I had been
trying to get close to an alligator.
I love to take photos of animals.
Love to take alligators is my passion.
I've walked up within 15 feet
of a 500 pound black bear.
I've walked up on a cow, elk.
Snakes, I do wildlife rehab so I handle
baby animals on a frequent basis.
And was on my way to a different location
that my cousin had told me about.
That hey you can see alligators down here.
Was driving down this dirt road
and going real slow.
And probably 50 yards,
75 yards in front of me.
I catch a glimpse of something
coming out of the woods.
It was on two legs running straight up.
Seven or eight foot tall.
And it makes three strides and it's
across the road and into the woods.
Then counter itself split seconds.
I mean, and it was just.
You kinda sit there dazed.
'Cause nothing in any
kind of wildlife book
or any kind of thing you've ever seen
can describe what I've just seen.
And what was that?
And within 15, 20 seconds
I hear something holler.
And I pulled a three point turn
in the dirt road and take off.
- [Lyle] Doyle Holmes lives
near the river bottoms,
a good distance from downtown Fouke.
A family man with a love
for hunting and fishing,
Doyle knows these woods
better than almost anyone.
Doyle claims a couple of encounters
with the creature and what happens
to be the same areas one of the
Legend of Boggy Creek's most
notable characters resided.
In the film, young
Travis Crabtree drops by
to visit an old hermit named Herb Jones
who lives deep within the bottoms.
The scene was based in reality as some
of the locals did visit Herb
Jones whenever possible.
Despite living in prime
Boggy Creek monster habitat,
Herb claimed to have
never seen the creature.
Before we write off
the creatures existence
based on the testimony
of one person however,
keep in mind that much like the creature,
Herb shunned civilization
and wouldn't have
wanted hoards of people
disturbing his peace
and quiet as they searched for the monster
in his own backyard.
Few people I've
encountered have run across
the Boggy Creek monster
on more than one occasion.
Even fewer are the times
I find it believable.
After all, we've been
searching for the creature
for decades, maybe even
centuries with no luck.
What are the odds that one man would
run across it more than
once in his lifetime?
However, given Doyle's proximity
to an isolated, underpopulated
stretch of woods,
and a murky lake that
sees few human intruders,
it is possible.
So take me through the incident
where you saw the creature
in the Cypress canopy.
How did you get in that
position, what did you see?
- Back in 2004 I decided to get up early
and go fishing one morning.
Unloaded the canoe and put it in
right before the sun
come up in the morning.
I want to be out before daylight
to have my lines in the water.
And about 30 minutes later
as the sun started to come up
I could hear a splash in the distance.
So I kinda wanted to get a little closer
to see what it was.
So I easily paddled over
through the mist of the early morning.
As the sun started to get just
a little bit high in the trees
and shine through the mist
I could see a two legged figure
off in the distance under the cypress.
And the water was up over the land
and he was kicking around in the water
making loud splashes like he
was looking for something.
And at that point I kinda paddled,
see if I could get any closer
without him seeing me.
And there was a point where I could
feel that he knew I was there.
What I was looking at was very large.
Very large legs, hairy legs.
And you could tell what it was
was a very powerful bipedal animal.
- What would you estimate the height to be
if you could take a estimation.
- At that point by his legs
I would have to say that it was
at least seven feet.
It looked like an animal
weighing at least 500 pounds.
- [Lyle] Despite occurring
in the early 2000's
Doyle's description is much the same
as Terry Sutton's who's
sighting happened in 1982.
Or Will Lunsford's who saw it
as a boy in the late 1970's.
As a matter of fact, their descriptions
sound nearly identical to what people
were seeing prior to The
Legend of Boggy Creek
and on back into the 1950's.
And what about those reports
of hairy wild men from the 1800's?
While the descriptions from the 1800's
are wrapped in terminology
we don't use today,
at their most basic, what
people were describing
was an upright, hair
covered, man like being
who shunned mankind and kept to itself.
The Boggy Creek monster didn't just appear
in 1971 when it made headlines.
It's been here all along.
- There are rumors years ago
of a train, a circus train.
We got two railroad tracks just over here.
Probably not even a mile.
Of a circus train wreck and something
could have got off that circus train.
So I went to the world books,
I looked through all the animals.
It was not a sloth.
It was not any kind of bear.
It wasn't anything, the
closest it resembled like
said it resembled an ape.
Like a gorilla, except
an eight foot gorilla
that weighs about 800 pounds.
- Talked to so many people that lived
in this area that has actually seen
something in their yard.
They claimed it to be a gorilla.
A monkey type animal.
And some even believed it was a large bear
until it ran off.
Then the story changes.
I've talked to hunters that's
been ran out of the woods.
Unexplained noises.
I got friends that claim people
have turned apes loose in this area.
- It's not a panther.
No way, it's not an animal.
An animal would.
You know, panthers don't go in
and beat on a window
trying to get into a house.
And a panther don't do
the different things
that people saying.
This is definitely wrong.
This is something that was knowledgeable.
Something that knew how to enter a house.
Been knocking on a window,
knocking on a door.
Things such as that, so
this is not the animal.
- Whenever it ran from the hay bail
to the front of my car it was just like,
I had this image.
Just like picture image
in front of my head.
I could see the muscle
movement of like the legs.
The muscle structure of
the legs, and the arms,
and around the back and stuff.
It's hands and feet were actually darker
than the hair color.
Kind of like a monkey or an ape would be.
- [Lyle] As for evidence of the monster,
I keep going back to the three toed track.
Why three toes?
If it's not a hoax or a
misidentified natural animal,
then what kind of bipedal,
seven foot tall creature
can carry itself on a foot
with only three digits?
A few years ago while
hog hunting in the same
area where his encounters occurred,
Doyle and his son found a line of tracks
not unlike those found in
Willy Smith's bean field.
Only this time with five toes.
As with so many of the mysteries connected
to the Boggy Creek monster,
this seems to raise even more questions.
A lot of people say that the
Fouke monster has three toes.
And I mean this goes back
to what the movie portrayed
and it has become something associated
with the Fouke monster.
But this is a five toed--
- Yes.
- Which is closer to what we see as
Bigfoot tracks.
In your opinion does it seem more natural
that it has five toes?
- Yeah, I've personally never seen any
three toed tracks that didn't
turn out to be a crane.
All the tracks we've seen since,
and we've seen quite a
few in the berry patches
through the years and
they all had five toes.
(loud rumbling)
(ominous music)
- [Lyle] Few elements of
The Legend of Boggy Creek
are as memorable as the
creatures famous scream.
But was the scream based in reality?
It seems that way.
In 1916 a family traveling near Fouke
encountered a hairy figure that let out
a bone chilling shriek.
And there have been other reports of
bizarre sounds emanating
from the woods of the area.
Smokey Crabtree himself reported hearing
a strange scream near his home
on more than one occasion.
And in my own files I
have plenty of reports
from around Fouke of a bizarre scream
or yell accompanied by
sightings of the creature.
It seems that whatever the
Boggy Creek monster may be,
it's not as shy about being heard
as it is about being seen.
While preparing to film Doyle's interview,
we heard what might very well be
the creatures call for ourselves.
Is that (mumbles)?
- [Doyle] That was a tree knot.
Well this is about the
time you start to hear 'em.
- [Narrator] Doyle, do you hear it?
- [Narrator] What was that?
What was that?
- [Narrator] Probably one of them.
- [Narrator] I'm recording.
- [Narrator] Yeah this is the
time you start to hear 'em.
- [Narrator] Can you take a step...
- [Narrator] What was that?
(crickets)
- [Narrator] Getting close.
(ominous music)
- [Lyle] Though we can't say for sure,
it's entirely possible that Doyle and I
had a brush with the same creature
who has stalked this land for decades.
- I believe this creature to
be a primate of some sort.
I've been a lot of places.
I've probably been in
35 different countries
and heard a lot of different
animals out in the woods.
This particular animal I
hadn't heard very much.
The only thing I can associate the sound
that I've heard out of the
woods is a Howler monkey.
And they're not indigenous
to south Arkansas.
They're just not here.
But it's the closest
thing I can come up with.
- And it was a holler
modeled with a scream.
I can't imitate that sound,
but it was horrifying.
I've heard bears make sounds.
I've heard bobcats, I've
heard panthers make sounds.
And they can make your hair stand on end,
but this was horrifying in sound.
And like I said, nothing that even
comes close to comparing
what that sound was.
- [Lyle] If the monster was truly real,
then the creature has to have
a sustainable population.
There can't be just one
Boggy Creek monster.
While reports of the creature do share
a general description,
there are variations in hair color,
size, facial features, and even attitude.
It's not something you hear of
as often as sightings of large
presumable adult creatures,
but reports of juveniles do come in.
The idea had apparently come
to Charles Pierce himself
as the inevitable sequel to
The Legend of Boggy Creek,
titled Boggy Creek 2 The Legend Continues.
Featured not only the
classic marauding monster,
but it's offspring as well.
Like all good stories,
Boggy Creek 2's baby monster
seems to have been rooted in reality.
True that I saw again,
seven eight foot tall easily.
And I can't explain to you why
I have the feeling that it was juvenile.
Other than I work with animals
and I see animals all the time
and it did not have an adult appearance.
It was markedly juvenilistic
in characteristic.
But it was not an adult.
Whatever.
It wasn't full grown in my opinion.
- So let's talk about
your latest experience.
Discuss that a little bit.
You said you were coming down,
you were looking for firewood?
Is that right?
Can you take me through
what happened that day?
- Well it was about this time
at night or the afternoon.
And I pulled my old Jeep
down here in the woods
and got my chainsaw and started
cutting up some firewood.
I got off in there, my wife
stayed in the truck watching.
I heard a cry that sounded
kinda like a child.
And so I started making
my way through the brush
to see what it was, to see if
there was a lost kid out here.
And as I made my way
closer to the source of the cry,
it was getting louder and louder
until it almost turned into a scream.
And then when I got to
it through the bushes
and could actually see it,
I was amazed that it
was a juvenile Bigfoot.
Probably about five foot tall.
Maybe a little shorter than five foot.
And covered in hair.
Surprisingly human in the face.
And at that point you could hear,
I guess mom and dad coming.
And they were getting angry
'cause they could hear
their baby boy crying.
They knew he was in distress.
- So the sound you heard coming,
describe that.
- It sounded like it was four
or 500 yards away at first.
But they started getting louder and louder
and it was getting closer.
I got back on shore and
I looked at the truck
and nobody's in it.
And I go, "Where is my wife at?"
And so I run to the truck and
saw her, she was hiding in
the floorboard of the truck.
She had heard the sound
of the big ones coming,
it scared her so she
rolled the windows up,
locked the doors, and hid in
the floorboard of the truck.
- [Lyle] It's been over four decades
since it first appeared in my life.
And I still know very
little about the creature.
Like many of those who
claim to have seen it,
it's hard to believe.
The mysteries that surround the case
are as perplexing today as
they were a century ago.
If it is real, the so called monster
seems to be ape like in appearance.
Covered in hair and has a
foot with three to five toes.
It keeps to the isolated,
uninhabited regions of Miller County.
Only occasionally venturing down waterways
such as Boggy Creek.
Possibly in search of food
or more suitable habitat.
Most importantly, once seen,
it leaves an impression that
is never outrun or forgotten.
- And after I saw that I kept trying
to come in touch with the
fact that you're not crazy.
You saw what you saw.
And then I took a lot of ridicule
but my story has never.
I've told my story to my wife.
We've been married 34
years, it's never changed.
And it's never gonna change because it's
like a little video loop
running through my head.
I can see the same thing over,
and over, and over again.
- I saw something.
I don't know what it was.
I was a skeptic of Bigfoot until
I saw what I saw.
- Ever since I've seen it
it's become you know, like a,
I guess kind of like a
under cover secret passion.
Because it's a mystery.
And some day, some how somebody's gonna
find the evidence that we all need
to prove our saneness.
- Once you kinda get over the fear
of the sighting,
that was very short lived to me.
What became a much bigger
fear to me was people.
The reaction, how people
would receive the story,
what they would think.
Which is why this is the first time ever
that I have talked about this event.
Especially first time I've ever
brought anybody through the
whole experience on site.
Though I've told the story to some.
I've never before today came down
to the site and walked
anyone through it before.
And a lot of it had to do
with the fear of people
way more than the fear of the creature.
- Yeah, I think that it's becomes
from something you see in
a movie or on the screen
later in your life it
translates to a reality.
And you're in the legend,
you're part of it.
- Absolutely, the movies
become real life to me.
Over the years with what I've seen
and living probably in the heart of
Bigfoot country in the south,
it's really come to life.
And I'm living the movie now.
- [Lyle] Sightings of
the Boggy Creek monster
haven't stopped.
Today the creature seems
more alive than ever.
While many may have expected the legacy
of Pierce's movie eventually fade away,
it lives on as it's
introduced to new generations
of horror fans and to
those with a curious eye
for the unexplained.
While development
encroaches on some of the
forested areas of Miller County,
the bottom lands remain much the same
as they've always been.
It's here that the creature,
or the memory of the
creature still resides.
- I've seen more things happen around here
in the last 10 years than
I've seen in the past.
Even though there was a lot of sightings.
The sightings have never stopped.
They've been going on for a long time.
- Since the movie came out a
lot of things have changed.
One thing, we've become more,
I don't know burbia.
It's a lot more advanced
than it used to be.
Before people would leave their house
3 o'clock in the morning,
they didn't come home
until the sun went down
when they were done working.
So they were in the woods gathering food
out of the woods.
So now people go to town,
they work eight hours,
they come and flop in
front of the television.
So the actual amount
of people in the woods
in my mind has decreased.
'Cause unless you're a logger,
you're a farmer, or you're intentionally
going out here for some reason.
There's no reason just to show up.
- The last call that we had come in
there was a girl from up north
that was visiting family here in Fouke.
These two little girls
went riding on the bicycle
and they was riding one
in front of the other one.
And the other little girl went on down
and stopped, turned around,
and her friend wasn't there.
She had wrecked out.
So she drove back and said what happened?
She says, "Right between
us a great big monster
"just come out of the weeds
and run across in front of us.
"You didn't see it?"
She says, "No I just kept
my eyes on the road."
This little girl was scared to death.
Now these are little girls
and this little girl from up north,
and this was right before I retired.
Which was 2006.
- [Lyle] In October of 2000, Stacy Hudson,
an avid outdoorsman and bow hunter
encountered the Boggy Creek monster
in a tree stand early one morning.
As a result, Stacy's life
was changed dramatically.
What I've learned from Stacy's sighting
is that despite the modernization
of southern Arkansas,
the creature might still call
the Sulphur River bottoms home.
- Got to the stand, the
stand was twisted around
all backwards like something
was messing with it.
But they didn't steal it.
It was twisted around so I just got in it
and straightened it up and climbed in.
It was a full moon.
It was probably an hour before daylight
and I heard something coming up beside me,
so I just slowly looked over
and it was two objects.
Clouds were moving in and out
so you could see one second
and then it'd get a little darker.
But I mean it was close.
It was probably 15 foot away.
When they got under me,
one of them reached up,
touched the side of my leg, went down,
I think it grabbed my climbing stand
and reached up.
Because I had my bow in my lap,
my arrow sticking out in front of me.
He reached up, grabbed my arrow,
and I guess it cut him
'cause he started hollering.
And then he just hollered all the way
down to the bayou.
Crashed in and then I
heard it cross the creek.
And I guess I just sat there in shock
for about 30 minutes
until it got daylight.
And after that, I didn't bow
hunt for about six years.
- [Lyle] Today, Fouke is
still a quiet little town
just off Highway 71.
A stop gap on the way to
somewhere else for some.
And a big legend to others.
The Legend of Boggy Creek has created
an icon out of what was
once just a local folktale.
Though there are still those who would
rather forget the monster,
for the most part Fouke has adopted
the creature as their local mascot.
At the Miller County museum you can
see the impact the famous legend has had
on their local culture.
Then there's the Monster Mart.
What was once an ordinary
convenience store
has become something far more.
Part museum, part souvenir stand,
the Monster Mart has become
Boggy Creek headquarters
for monster hunters
from all over the world.
Clearly Fouke sees a value in the legend.
(slow paced music)
- It's part of our heritage here.
I know some people probably don't like it,
but some people do.
But you got that on
anything you talking about.
That was my main thrush
was trying to get something
done here in my store.
And to have something that would be
more of a heritage type
deal for a community.
I wanna expand more into museum type items
and artifacts and stuff that would mean
something to look at,
something to ponder on.
- You know Fouke is Fouke.
Just Fouke.
But now whenever you talk about Fouke,
you know, you don't say Miller County,
it don't ring a bell.
But you say Boggy Creek or you say Fouke,
then all of a sudden there's
someone in the crowd,
more than three is gonna
know something about it.
It's brought a lot here.
- The monster sightings
have brought the attention
of the world on a little
town and a little creek
and the area of Miller County.
- [Lyle] I often ask myself what is it
about this place that made
the creature settle here.
It's probably something simple.
An animal in need of a primitive habitat
with plenty of food and water.
And an abundance of cover.
But maybe, like so many of the locations
made famous by the movie,
it just wants to be forgotten.
The bean field where
those famous three toed
tracks were found is still there.
But the Ford house, Herb Jones old shack,
and even the original General Store
have all disappeared.
But if you know where to look,
you might still catch a
glimpse of the remains.
Today the Searcy house,
though featured heavily in
the film, lies abandoned.
Some of the family that
call this place home
have long since moved away.
Many of the witnesses who played a part
in the creatures story,
prefer to leave that piece
of their lives behind.
It's certainly understandable.
The creature tends to
haunt those it encounters
long after they've parted ways.
What is it that continues to bring me back
year after year to this small town
and it's rugged wilderness?
Why do I keep chasing a creature
that some say it just a myth?
A folktale, a legend?
The truth is, I can't stop.
Like so many of those who've experienced
the Boggy Creek monster,
it haunts me.
Not because I've seen it,
but because I want to see it.
So I come back to this place
that first captured my imagination
all those years ago when it flickered
to life in The Legend of Boggy Creek.
I come back because I want to hear
the creatures mournful cry for myself.
I come back because I
want to know the truth.
(slow paced music)