Admittedly, I’m a crypto nut. My father bought me a hardcover book on monsters when I was a kid and I’ve been hooked ever since.  I remember it had some green, muppet-y looking creature on the cover. I wonder where it went.

For folks my age (I was born around the time the Jets won the Super Bowl), there is a pivotal movie that hooked our fascination with Bigfoot. That film, a drive-in flick that took the country by storm, was The Legend of Boggy Creek. The movie was shot like a documentary and recalls the tale of the Fouke Monster and how it terrorized a town in Arkansas in 1971. Production was cheap, actual townies were used to re-enact events and the pacing was, well, ponderous at times.

With everything going against it, The Legend of Boggy Creek succeeded in terrifying audiences, first in theaters, then on home video, for years. Something about it felt so real, so plausible, that you can’t help being sucked in to the story.

Like most, I thought this was a brief Bigfoot flap that came and went. I was wrong. There is so much more to the story. Here’s everything you need to know about the Bigfoot sightings in and around the now legendary Fouke, Arkansas.

The sightings of a large, bipedal creature did’t begin in 1971. In fact, there are records of brushes with the hairy cryptid, both written and verbal, going back 100 years and continuing right up to the present day, Individuals, families, hunters and even police have all had strange encounters, especially around Highway 71 and the Sulphur River Bottoms.

What makes the Fouke Bigfoot different than other squatches in other locations? From all accounts, the Fouke Bigfoot is aggressive. In quite a few cases, it’s been very threatening towards humans. The Ford family house was attacked by a large, angry creature that tore off doors, broke through windows and grabbed people with intent to harm. This is very uncommon for Bigfoot sightings. The Fouke Bigfoot is not a happy camper and people have gone into shock after coming across it. It’s been known to charge at and even grab people with talon-tipped fingers.

As the town of Fouke has seen a decrease in forested land that makes a perfect hideout for the beasts, it’s been seen less there, but more so in neighboring towns less than 10  miles away that are still dense with trees and winding rivers. Are they migrating? It seems likely.

The creature is generally described as being between 6 and 8 feet tall, with glowing red eyes. On some night encounters, people have seen the eyes first, then the massive body emerging from the dark. Its face is tanned and very human-like.

I don’t think any Bigfoot has been shot at more times than the creatures living in Fouke. The odd thing is that many experienced hunters have had the creature in their sights and appear to have missed every time. Unless there’s a Bigfoot hospital somewhere that tends to their wounds, they’ve all escaped unscathed.

Now, I’m not saying everything that’s been reported is true. I’m just stating the facts. You can visit the town for yourself and see.

Before you go, you may want to bone up on the story and enjoy some of the fiction that’s grown up around it. I highly suggest the following:

• The Beast of Boggy Creek by Lyle Blackburn. From what I can tell, this is the definitive collection of all things Fouke Monster. Blackburn has done an excellent job collecting all of the lore and reports.
• Boggy Creek : The Legend is True by Eric S. Brown. Probably the #1 Bigfoot fiction writer today, Brown’s story will grab you by the throat.
• Smokey and the Fouke Monster by Smokey Crabtree. Smokey actually lived in Fouke and was very much in the thick of things. An interesting bird’s eye view of the phenomena.

And of course, grab a copy of the movie. I have Fouke on my list of places to visit. I’m sure local Bigfoot researchers go into the woods from time to time, searching for the elusive legend.

Which begs the question, if you know that the Fouke Bigfoot is aggressive, would  you bring extra precautions on a hunt? Would knowing its temperment make you think twice before going out there?

The legend continues…