THE BEAST OF BOGGY CREEK: The True Story of the Fouke Monster Read Online Free PDF Page B

fast pace, it ran past unharmed. The variety of eerie descriptions given by the witnesses indicated that “it was swinging its arms” as it ran and “looked like a giant monkey.” The group had recently read about the Ford incident, so they were all aware of the monster at the time and even stated that they “thought it was just a hoax.” But after what they saw that night on the lonely stretch of Highway 71, their minds were changed, as was very clear in the article. Mrs. Sedgass was quoted as saying: “Some people don’t think there is anything to it (the monster), but I do,” summing up the feeling that the trio shared.
    The Fords may have been newcomers to the area, but the Woods were well known and respected citizens. While many of the locals were suspicious of the Fords’ tale, they were hard pressed to explain away the Woods’ sighting. The Miller County Sheriff at the time, Leslie Greer, was quoted as saying, “I know those people, and they were very reliable and very truthful. I don’t know what they saw, but I do believe they saw something.”
    Both of these original monster articles were written by Jim Powell, who could not have imagined he would become a major player in a legend. At the time he was a hard working journalist who was simply covering a bizarre story. But his diligent effort and straightforward presentation of the incidents were just the right combination to spark major public interest in the “monster.”
    “I just wrote what people told me,” Powell explained when I spoke to him on the phone. Powell still resides in Texarkana. “They didn’t editorialize like they do now. They just printed the story.”
    The morning after the Fords had their terrifying encounter, Powell got a call from Dave Hall, news director for Texarkana’s KTFS radio station. I also spoke with Hall during my research. He gave me a rundown of how it all started: “A doctor friend of mine called that morning [May 2] and said he had a guy down there at the hospital that had been attacked by a monster. He was scared so bad he was in shock. So I called Jim and said ‘let’s go down there and see what this is all about.’”
    They wasted no time in getting an address for the incident and hurried to the scene. When the two men arrived, they found the Fords in a state of frenzy, packing their belongings into a U-Haul in a tremendous hurry to leave town. It was certainly odd since the family had only moved there less than a week earlier.
    Several area law enforcement officials were on the scene along with a throng of onlookers that was growing by the minute. Powell retraced the events of the previous night, trying to sort out what had happened. In our phone conversation, Powell told me that “[Bobby Ford] definitely thought he was being attacked. He fought with something, then ran around the porch, and nearly jumped right through the front door. He was really afraid.”
     

    The actual house, pictured in 1969, where the Ford incident occurred.
The Fords rented the property from the Simmons family.
(Courtesy of the Miller County Historical Society)
     
    Powell and Hall searched the immediate area for evidence. There was a freshly plowed field behind the house, so the men looked for tracks where the Fords said they had seen some glowing eyes. “We went into the area behind the house and saw unusual footprints, and small saplings broken off,” Hall told me. “We never saw any blood, although the people said they fired several shots and thought they hit it.”
    The Texarkana Daily News and Texarkana Gazette both published a follow-up article in the days following, theorizing that the mysterious visitor may have been something less than monstrous. The article, which includes Powell’s first reference to the “Fouke Monster” by name, shifts the blame to a wild cat. Its headline read: “Monster may be mountain lion” and included the following statement: “’We think now it might have been a big cat, like a