Original subtitles

(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)