A lot of Texas Bigfoot sightings occur in East Texas; the Sulphur River, near the borders of Arkansas and Louisiana, is a hotbed of such sightings.
Just across the state line, on the Arkansas side of the Sulphur River, is where persistent Bigfoot reports inspired the movie 'Legend of Boggy Creek.' The movie took Bigfoot from rural myth into the realm of popular culture.
On the Lone Star side of the river, the Bigfoot monsters that come to inhabit at least the imagination go by many names, some of which sound like high-end fishing lures: Night Screamer, Hawley Him, Haskell Rascal, Wooly Bugger and Caddo Critter. Bigfoot aficionados describe these creatures as Sasquath's southern cousins.
The Texas Bigfoot Research Center - yes there is such a thing and, yes, it is a serious enterprise - has in its internet archive a sighting in Milam County in 1978 and another on the Lampasas River in 1977.
The Texas Bigfoot Research Center investigates (some would say perpetuates) Lone Star sightings of Bigfoot. The center's Web site reports more than 100 sightings per year in Texas. Of that number, the center deems about 75 legitimate.
That may or may not include the local sightings, like the one in the small Milam County community of Ad Hall in July, 1978.
In that one, 15-year old boy, Jeffrey Gelner, said he saw something about seven or eight feet tall and covered from head to toe in fine, dark brown hair. It scared the boy badly, and caused at least two local families to spend the next couple of nights elsewhere.
Other people, however, flocked to the site, eager to see Bigfoot for themselves. Leroy Broadus, sheriff at the time of the sighting, told a reporter he was 'more worried about the Bigfoot lookers than the Bigfoot itself.'
The Bigfoot Research Center investigated and declared footprints and claw marks found near the sighting to be man-made, not the work of a Bigfoot.
The family accepted that conclusion.
Still, they knew the teenager saw something.On The Lampasas
So, supposedly, did the anonymous witness to a Bigfoot sighting on the Lampasas River in 1977. His report was not filed with the Texas Bigfoot Research Center's Web site until August of 1998, 21 years after the sighting.
The witness said that he and five of his buddies gained access to the Lampasas River between Copperas Cove and Lampasas river at a low water crossing, made camp and set up some trotlines farther down the river. They took turns checking the trotlines every hour or so.
About 9:30 p.m., the witness and a buddy named Glen (described by the witness as the most level headed and clean living of the bunch) went by boat to check the lines. They reached a part of the river where they had to get out and carry the boat over a sandbar, which is when they heard whatever it was they heard.
'We could hear what sounded like trees being broken, and we could see by the moonlight trees falling from the top of the bank coming straight for us,' the report said. 'We are frozen and neither of us moves. Whatever it is (is) now coming right for us.'
The two teenagers beat what can only be described as a hasty retreat.
'We were screaming like a couple of eight-year old girls.
'This thing looked to be 7-8 feet in height, was dark with hair, had a small head which looked like two oranges, almost glowing eyes, no resemblance of a neck, and very long, swaying arms, covered with hair about a foot long.'
The next day they returned with Glen's brother, a preacher, to search the site. The only evidence they found was about 20 mesquite trees that had been broken about three feet from the ground, along with some deep indentions in the ground.
They don't know what they saw but, like the teenager in Milam County in 1978 and hundreds - maybe thousands - of others, they are sure they saw something.Hide Nor Hair
Bigfoot sightings in Texas are not new. The Comanche, Tonkawa and other tribes reported seeing a creature very much like the ones still described today. So did many of the early settlers.
The lack of conclusive evidence has always been a stumbling block for even the most ardent Bigfoot enthusiasts. Until somebody finds a skeleton, or rediscovers an unidentified skeleton sitting in a back room of a major laboratory somewhere, skeptics will abound.
Meanwhile, others keep their mind open to at least the possibility. Texas A&M anthropology professor Vaughn Bryant investigated Bigfoot sightings for many years in the Northwest. He came to Texas but Bigfoot more or less followed him here.
Asked by a Bryan-College Station newspaper last year if he believes in the existence of a Bigfoot, Bryant hedged his bets a bit.
'I'll tell you what I tell everybody,' he said. 'I'm not convinced that Bigfoot exists, but I'm also not convinced that Bigfoot does not exist.
'My feeling is, where there's that much smoke, there's gotta be fire. And there's a lot of smoke.'
