Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch, is not confined to the Pacific Northwest. He has been reported on every continent except Antarctica, and some believe he is right here in Louisiana.
Let me start out by saying that I do not believe Bigfoot exists in North America, but I’m open to the possibility that there may be unknown hominids in the vast expanses of Asia. What I find fascinating is the Bigfoot phenomenon itself. What exactly are all of these people seeing out there in the woods?
[Bigfoot: The Historical Record.]
The creature is said to have a humanoid face, stands between 6 and 8 feet tall, is covered in dark or reddish hair, and smells to high heaven.
Bigfoot tracks usually have five toes, but researchers claim that in Northwest Louisiana and East Texas they often have three toes, with one bulbous big toe and two smaller ones.
“It was hairy and looked like a human in a way,” he said. “I hollered at him, and he took off running. It happened so quick, I didn’t have time to be scared.”
Bigfoot likes to arrange sticks in strange patterns, twist and break large limbs and saplings and knock down small trees to mark a trail or stake out territory. Knocking on trees with a stick is also common and may be a way of signaling one another.
One researcher told me that Bigfoot can make sounds ranging from soft whistles and peacock-like cries to terrifying screams and roars.
According to him, my family heard a Bigfoot back in the mid-1960s when we lived in the piney woods of northern Winn Parish not far from Dugdemona River.
[Meet another wild creature of Louisiana. The newspaper claimed, “She is as fleet as a deer, and at one leap she cleared a root seven feet high. She uses no language, only gibberish.”]
During the wee hours of one bright moonlit morning, I was awakened by a cacophony of sounds. Our dogs were barking frantically, and the cows and dogs on my uncle’s place next door were also agitated. Something was making its way in the dark down Highway 505 in front of our house.
It made a noise like I had never heard before or since. Starting out in a low moan, it rose to a high pitch, like a woman screeching, and then fell back to a low moan.
The next morning I was reluctant to say anything, thinking maybe I had been dreaming, but I soon discovered the entire family had heard it.
A month later, on another moonlit night, we heard it again, but this time we were watching television. We chalked it up to a cougar, which were sometimes reported in the area, and have jokingly referred to it ever since as the “Dugdemona Wild Woman.”
When I related that story to a Bigfoot researcher, he asked, “Did it sound sort of like the old World War I air raid sirens?”
“Yeah,” I said, “a siren is exactly how I remember it.”
“Definitely,” he replied, “definitely, that was a Bigfoot.”
The Louisiana Bigfoot has even made it onto television with at least two programs focusing on sightings at Cotton Island in northern Rapides Parish and near Goldonna in Natchitoches Parish. I hunt around Goldonna so I’ll have to be extra careful there from now on.
In 2001, the Alexandria Daily Town Talk covered a Bigfoot sighting in central Louisiana after Earl Whitstine claimed to have seen one while cruising timber for a logging company.
[Meet the man who grew up in one of Louisiana's ghost towns.]
“It was hairy and looked like a human in a way,” he said. “I hollered at him, and he took off running. It happened so quick, I didn’t have time to be scared.”
Two days later, Carl Dubois was with Whitstine on the same tract of timber when they saw the creature again.
“When we saw it, Earl hollered at it, and it ran off toward [the bayou],” Dubois said. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
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One thing I have noticed in reading about Bigfoot is that a lot of the reports are simply unusual noises, smells, eyes shining in the dark, or an eerie feeling of being watched.
Are people really encountering an unknown creature, or are they simply experiencing something out of the ordinary and mistaking it for Bigfoot? If someone unexpectedly runs into a bear or hog in the woods where they’ve never seen one before, might their mind play tricks on them? Feral hogs, for example, have a distinct musty smell, and that would be an unusual assault on the senses of anyone who had never smelled one before.
And where is the hard evidence? With thousands of trail cameras in the woods these days, surely someone should have snapped a clear photo of Bigfoot if he really is creeping around. As one wildlife official told me, “The two things they should be recording are Bigfoot and black panthers, but we have yet to see a photograph of either.”
Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe who has received numerous awards for his books and outdoor articles.
The Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization (GCBRO) is the main Bigfoot research group in the South. Readers can go to its website at http://gcbro.com/ and read about Louisiana sightings or report a sighting.
