Fouke — the Fouke Monster (Boggy Creek)

OVERVIEW

The Fouke Monster is a large, hairy humanoid said to have been seen in and around Fouke, Miller County, Arkansas, in the early 1970s. Reports describe it as about seven feet tall, with long dark hair, a stench like skunk and wet dog, and red eyes. The journalist Jim Powell named it in the Texarkana Gazette and the Texarkana Daily News.

HISTORY

On the night of 2 May 1971 Elizabeth Ford said a creature reached through a screen window while she slept; her husband Bobby and his brother Don fired at it. Three-toed footprints, scratches on the porch and a damaged window were found. On 23 May D. C. Woods Jr., Wilma Woods and Mrs R. H. Sedgass reported an ape-like creature crossing U.S. Highway 71. A radio station offered a bounty, the sheriff imposed a no-guns policy, and three people were fined in 1971 'for filing a fraudulent monster report'. Charles B. Pierce's docudrama The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972) made it nationally known.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

DISPUTED. A month after the Ford incident the archaeologist Frank Schambach said there was 'a 99 percent chance the tracks are a hoax' — three toes where every primate has five. Joe Nickell suggested an earlier 1955 sighting fitted a black bear. Sporadic reports continued (forty in 1997).

VISITING

A small town in Miller County; the sightings were on private land and roads around it.