The Legend Of Arkansas’s Very Own Monster Will Chill You To The Bone
From the Yeti to the Loch Ness monster to the chupacabra, the whole world is full of mysterious monsters hiding away in swamps, beneath lakes, and on remote mountains. The Natural State has its own legendary creature, and ours is mysterious enough to have movies made about it and books written on its lore. The Fouke Monster, or the Boggy Creek Monster, is famous.
If you’re wondering where to go to learn about the monster, click this link. You’ll find directions and more information.
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Reports of the Boggy Creek Monster go all the way back to the early 1970s. Those early reports were all centered around the community of Fouke. People felt that the monster mostly followed Boggy Creek and made its home in the surrounding woods.
The cryptid was blamed for the destruction of livestock in the area, and responsible for scaring a lot of folks, too. The monster was named by a reporter from Texarkana. After all, if you’re going to make a monster famous in the papers, the monster should have a cool name.
In the 1980s, the myth of the Fouke Monster moved north and east of its origin, and was reported to be much larger at 10 feet tall and 800 pounds. What remains the same across the reports is that the monster is covered with long, dark hair and moves like an ape.
The myth of the monster has become a point of fascination, inspiring several movies and even more books. The most famous of which was the 1972 film The Legend of Boggy Creek.
I’m not saying you should go crashing around the woods monster-hunting, but if you’re going to try, you might consider Monster Mart your best bet for a staging ground.
J.B. Weisenfels has lived in rural Arkansas for three decades. She is a writer, a mom, and a graduate student. She is also an avid collector of tacky fish whatnots, slightly chipped teapots, and other old things. In her spare time she enjoys driving to the nearest creek to sit a while. If you were to visit her, she'd try to feed you cornbread.
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