PHOTOGRAPH BY RAGGED STONE DESIGN / DREAMSTIME
I met Bigfoot in third grade.
He scared a kitten to death. He lifted two 100-pound hogs over a barbed-wire fence and carried them off down the creek. He menaced three teen girls during a sleepover, hulking in the twilight outside their trailer. He attacked Bobby White, breaking the bathroom window and thrashing around inside while Bobby sat on the toilet.
You can’t take yourself seriously as a “Bigfoot person” without knowing these were crucial scenes from the 1972 docudrama, The Legend of Boggy Creek.
That’s where I met Bigfoot. As the movie’s narrator says, “It scared me then; it scares me now.”
I grew up in a small Tennessee town and a good friend grew up in the sticks around that town. Mom drove me to a sleepover at his house one night. The house hunched at the bottom of a rocky hill among a stand of tall pines that was dense and dark even by daylight. Planted near the woodshop was one of those massive old satellite dishes, faded and stained by time. To my third-grade mind, this all looked friendly enough in the daytime. In the dark, to that same third-grade mind, it would change into a hellish nightscape with death promised somewhere — everywhere.
Pizza eaten and pallets made on the floor, my buddy and I settled in front of his massive television. He fiddled with the satellite buttons on the control box. Through blizzards of confusing static, he paused on a swampy scene with weird music. The movie was old, soft-focused, and orangey-brown, like the pictures in Granny’s scrapbook. To my surprise, he whooped with joy, and stopped on the swampy scene. I didn’t know how to work the control box. So, my dreams of watching some R-rated, non-Mom-approved, alien blast-’em-up were crushed.
If the film burned Bigfoot into my brain, this experience seared Bigfoot down deeper somehow, into my psyche. The movie creature was plainly fake. But the fear was real, a visceral, physical fear I’d never experienced before.
Boggy Creek invited me into the little town of Fouke, Arkansas, “a right beautiful place to live, until the sun goes down.” As the film rolled, I had no idea what to expect. I’m not even sure I knew what a Bigfoot was back then. But when I first caught sight of “the monster,” sweat beaded on my upper lip and that pizza grumbled in my gut. The Fouke Monster screamed through the woods, stole chickens, and staggered ominously through Boggy Creek. By the time they drove poor Bobby White (in shock after his toileted Bigfoot attack) to a Texarkana hospital, the creature was burned into my brain. I was afraid of a thing I didn’t even know existed when I woke up that morning.
As the credits rolled, my friend casually opened his front door, motioned me to it, and said he wanted to show me something outside. Bigfoot lived out there, I knew then. I stepped out the door thinking we were going to have some spooky fun together. Nope. Instead, he shoved me over the threshold, slammed the door behind me, locked the door, and turned off the porch light.
I beat on the door and hurled third-grade profanities at my friend. But once I settled down, I backed up to the door, took a deep breath, and looked to the stars, so bright that far outside of even our tiny town.
Crickets. That was good. Wildlife hushed when the creature was around. That’s what the movie said. The smell of pines. That was good, too. The creature smelled like skunk, garbage, and wet dog.
Still, my knees knocked, just like Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” I cried, as emotions and fears boiled up inside my hot face and burned my eyes. Wipe those away. Hand in front of my face: nothing. I hadn’t peed my pajamas and that … What was that?! I whimpered at the sound of a large limb breaking somewhere in the woods. I bit my lip.
I turned, rattled the doorknob, and heard my friend horse-laughing behind the door. Something bumped against something and … did a dark shadow race across the pitch-black darkness? I began beating on the door again, this time screaming a long, hoarse cry much like that of the movie creature. Bigfoot stomped toward me, I was sure, and my head was going to …
The door flung open and I burst through it, collapsing in a heap on the floor but stealing one last glance at the darkness shrinking as the door closed. The porch lights came on. No Bigfoot. Shame and relief washed over me in equal measure. I checked and I still hadn’t peed my pajamas. Score at least that one for me.
If the film burned Bigfoot into my brain, this experience seared Bigfoot down deeper somehow, into my psyche. The movie creature was plainly fake. But the fear was real, a visceral, physical fear I’d never experienced before.
photograph courtesy of toby sells (and bigfoot)
Toby Sells (he’s the one on the left) and Bigfoot share a beer and a laugh at Bigfoot’s place in the woods.
It Turned Out, I Wanted More.
In the weeks after my experience, Bigfoot dominated my searches through our tiny library’s card catalog. With all the Bigfoot (and Sasquatch and Yeti and Yowie) books read, I moved on to the Loch Ness monster, Mothman, werewolves, ghosts, psychics, UFOs, and so much more.
I didn’t know this topic was called “paranormal” until I heard show host Robert Stack use the term on the 1990s TV series Unsolved Mysteries. But I knew paranormal was not Scooby Doo. (I mean, remember Stack’s trench coat? That man was telling the truth.) Real people around the globe witnessed things and described them the same way for generations. Unless the whole thing — everything paranormal — was an international hoax carried out by millions of attention-seekers, something real was happening. This mystery was the hook for me; it still is.
Later, I dabbled in more grown-up mysteries, mostly conspiracy theories from the CIA’s very-real MK Ultra project to the who-knows-what JFK assassination. But I always came back to Bigfoot. Bigfoot was deadly and dead simple, a killer monster in the woods. That third-grade fear of the original boogey man haunted me. I found out later, it haunted many others, too.
The Memphis Bigfoot Festival Is Born
I get two questions when people see me in a Memphis Bigfoot Festival T-shirt. It’s really the same question, meant two ways: “Is that real?”
Me: Bigfoot?
Them: The festival.
Me: Yes.
Them: And Bigfoot? Around Memphis?
Me: Not much. (There is another, longer answer. But I’m not trying to bore anybody in the Target checkout line.)
When this happens, I still cannot believe I started such a weird thing, nor can I believe it began way back in 2017.
The Patterson-Gimlin Film is the undisputed best piece of Bigfoot video evidence in existence. You’ve seen it, even if you’re not a “Bigfoot person.” It’s brown and grainy and shows a large, dark, human-shaped animal walking on two legs. As the creature lurches away from the camera, it gives a heart-stopping glance back at the lens before stomping off into the wilderness. The (allegedly) real footage reinforced what I wanted to believe in the fictional Boggy Creek movie. A big, hairy monster — unknown to science — really did live out in the woods.
That film turned 50 in 2017. Huge celebrations were planned for the California town near the film site and I wanted to go. A quick internet search for plane tickets, lodging, and everything else poured cold water on my pilgrimage to the heart of the Bigfoot fringe. Disheartened, I considered my options over a pint at Memphis Made Brewing Co. There, I had the dumbest idea ever. I’d just hold my own Bigfoot Festival, right there at the Cooper-Young brewery.
Owners Andy Ashby and Drew Barton, my friends at Memphis Made, didn’t think it was dumb, exactly. They weren’t sure what to think, but they agreed to host the event. In the beginning, I was sure it would be only me and a dozen flannel-clad dudes sitting around, nerding out on the Big Man. But an hour after the doors opened, the taproom was uncomfortably (and joyously) packed with hundreds of beer-drinking Bigfoot friends.
When a story begins, the room goes quiet, eyes are up, and storytellers take as long as they like. Some of the stories are clearly hogwash. Some of them still send shivers down my spine.
Another friend, Stephen Guenther (owner of The Broom Closet and Historical Haunts of Memphis), hosted a crazy-interesting discussion about a Bigfoot encounter with local thriller author Steve Bradshaw. Beers flowed. I showed some evidence clips and ran through “The Year in Bigfoot,” a rundown of the previous year’s biggest Bigfoot stories. (There are more than you might think.) Our costume contest brought the tallest, most realistic Bigfoot costume and the tiniest, weirdest Bigfoot baby doll I’d ever seen.
The first year ended with what has become my favorite part of the Bigfoot Festival. I turn on the microphone and open the floor to anyone in the crowd who wants to tell their Bigfoot encounter story. No laughter or jeers are allowed, but this rule has never been needed. When a story begins, the room goes quiet, eyes are up, and storytellers take as long as they like. Some of the stories are clearly hogwash. Some of them still send shivers down my spine.
With the last tale finished and that first Bigfoot Festival drawn to a close, I stepped offstage to wobbly knees, just like stupid, old Ichabod Crane. But I was electrified. I’d done it and everybody had fun, even those who showed up ironically to gawk and point at the “Bigfoot people.” My Memphis Made friends were elated and immediately welcomed me to do a Ghost Festival or UFO Festival anytime I wanted. They were joking, but the thing was a success for them. And they didn’t know what that meant to me.
So What Happened Next?
Bigfoot has stomped into Memphis Made every year since then, except for 2020 because … you know why. In those years, we’ve had some well-known and serious Bigfoot researchers come and speak. The festival takes Bigfoot seriously, too. We just don’t take ourselves very seriously. So, I try to have something for just about anyone who would even consider attending something called a Bigfoot Festival.
Details of this year’s Bigfoot Festival have not yet been finalized. We’ve always done it around the Halloween spooky season. But this year we may do it a few weeks after, when the Memphis event calendar is a bit roomier. This year I hope to have the Big Four: beer, barbecue, bluegrass, and Bigfoot, and make it a down-home-fun fall event. We’ll see.
Bigfoot and the paranormal have been positive influences in my life. I’m constantly curious and these mysteries won’t (likely) ever be solved. I love stories and, maybe, without Bigfoot early in my life (sending me ravenously through the library’s card catalog) I would not have sought them out all my life. Without that, I — maybe — would never have become a journalist. Lots of maybes there; who knows? It’s easier simply to thank Bigfoot and move on.
I never got a chance to thank my third-grade buddy for the Bigfoot introduction. I never will. He passed away recently, and he probably never knew that I grew up to be a “Bigfoot person” after his terrifying stunt all those many spooky nights ago. He might’ve thought my love of the paranormal and the festival were weird. But somehow, I don’t think so.
He’d met Bigfoot before I did and wanted to show him around, to me at least. So, I think he, like me, would have agreed with the Boggy Creek movie narrator who said the creature “scared me then, it scares me now.”
Toby Sells is news editor for the Memphis Flyer and founder of the Memphis Bigfoot Festival.
