Who Believes in Bigfoot (1)

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WHO BELIEVES I

BIGFoot? HEY S Y WE ALL HAVE SPECIAL PLACES WHERE THE MAGIC DUST

lingers, and for me it all started on a stifling sum mer afternoon in 1978,

in the deliciously cool darkness of the old C inem a Ea.st The ater in N orm an.

Sasquatch The Legend ofBigfoot was the

matinee, and I was hanging on every hair-

raising howl. I slowly munched a sweaty,

sticky handful of Boston baked beans from

the lobby vending machine as some poor

anonym ous schm uck in a mon key suit earned

his SAG card the hard way, shrieking and

lumbering into my fertile imagination.

Bigfoot was at the heigh t of his popula rity

back then, riding the crest of a wave of public-^

ity dating back to 1958, when the term itself

first entered the national lexicon following

the discovery of huge footprints on a logging

road in the Pacific No rthw est. Bigfoot m ania

really got craiiking after the infamous 1967

Roger Patterson film that allegedly caught a

female Bigfoot scowling for the cam era, and

it built to a fever pitch after the 1973 release

of The Legend of Boggy Creek

Books, m ovies, Leonard N imoy s som berintonations on In Search Of... -—how could

He was as tibiquitous as Howard Cosell. And

then, like Freshen-up gum and Peter Framp-

ton, he simply disappeai ed from the national

consciou sness, th e patin a of seventies tad slowly

dulling the terrifying legend.

Since that first encounter, the Cin em a East

has long since been torn down to make way

for a M cDon ald s, Sasquatch has become acollectible example of mid-seventies schlock,

and Boston baked beans have found their way

onto a growing list of foods tha t com plicate m y

ever-expanding waistline. But Bigfoot has held

on. s pop iconography goes, his halcyon days

seem permanently behind bim, at least until

someon e proves his existence. But on e tbin g is

for sure: You will never disprove it. People like

Charles H allmark will see to that.

The secluded hills of Beavers Bend

Resort Park a re said to be a habi-tat of Bigfoot. Inset the legend ary

In parts of Oklaho

the lurking half-m

half-animal is said

be just a legend. B

is it? In a quest rem

niscen t of the X-F

chad luowt exami

the fact, the fiction

and the festival of

Bigfoot mania.



' H E SAID H E D SEEN

BlGFOOX ANDTHEY

A

v l

ASTRUEBELIEVERSGO.HALL

is decidedly low key: The e

soft-spoken sixty-five-year-o

phur resident possesses an unflappabl

demeanor devoid of hyperbole or evan

fer\'or. In conversation, he has the slow

and easy, self-deprecating wit of an ocountrj ' folk healer, which is exactly w

is, dispensing natural homeopathic re

For a variety of ailments from the nine

Farm where he lives with his wife a

brothers. He is , in short , complete

utterly believable, a trial lawyer's ch

witness dream.

He also happens to believe the O kl

woods are full of bairy, eight-foot-ta

that like to snack on discarded fas

while they watch us noisi ly recre

the weekends.

And Hallmark isnt a lone in his

From the hills around Sulphur to the se

moun tain hollows of Hon obia, there is

but dedicated group of Oklahoman

claim they have seen something out

someth ing they can't explain. It s large, it

it walks upright, it eats just about an

and it smells really bad. Whi le that de

at least one member of virtually eve

family, the p eople w ho claim to have se

creature swear it's not Uncle Vic.

According to them, it 's BigFoot, a

or it, as the case may be, is no joke.

T hese things are everywhere, Ha

says quietly bu t firmly du ring an int

in his rural oFfice. He is wearing a

and hat emblazoned with the emble

group called the Indian Territory Sasq

BigFoot Inves t iga t ive Group ( ITS

a loose ly kni t organiza t ion oF B

Naturopctthic doctor Charies Hallm

of Sulphur displays fingerprint evidHallmark is one of Oklahoma s lea



he says, "but they don't min d

ch in 19 98 when a friend confided

e said, 'You wouldn't thin k 1 was crazy

httime exped itions in hopes of glimps-

"Trails going and comin g, saplings

what i t was, but now 1

That's when Hallmark had an

doesn't want it. It goes in the garbage can.

Bigfoot comes by that night and cleans out

those garbage cans."

Hallmark says he's personally had eight

sightings and knows of many more. Accord-

ing to him, the twelve-foot-tall creatures

resemble a great ape, "bu t prettier, closer toman," he says. "They're not tremendously

bad-looking. Their arms are much longer,

their legs are longer, and there's a different

and stronger musculature."

They also, says Hallmark , have an innate

curiosity about humans.

"One time, in March 2002, we were

in the park near a swimming hole, and

there was a father and his two boys riding

around on bikes," says Hallmark. "It was

dusky dark, so this friend of mine said he

was going to walk across the bridge, and

he came face to face with one. This thing

was so engrossed with watching these kids

ride their bicycles that he never saw my

friend, who walked right up on him. He

took oi^ immediately when he realized my

friend was there."

Hallmark estimates there are at

least "three or tour hundred"

such creatures in Oklah om a.

"These things seem to

l i ke be ing a r oundpeople , " Ha l lmark

says. "^X^at I want to

do is gather evidence that

proves to the world they arc

alive and widespread."

Park managers, however,

say they've come u p em pty

handed on their own Big-

foot sightings.

"W e ' r e a w a r e o f M r .

Hallmark's claims," says park

spokesperson Susie Staples,"but we're not aware o any proof or evi-

IGFOOT

CROSSING

I guess," she says with a laugh, "that adds

to the mystery, doesn't it?"

If there is a Bigfoot in the park, he's an

elusive creature, indeed, because the park itself

is absolutely crawling with a more com mon

hominid—us.

"O ur ann ual recreation visits are around 1.4

million, b ut o ur total visits are closer to 3.1

million," says Staples, citing vehicle cou nter

statistics. "In addition, the area attracts deer

hunters in the fall, mountain biking, hikers.

Lots and lots of people."

Park resource m anager Steve Burroug h says

he's skeptical but keeps an open mind.

As a biologist, you have to," says Burrou gh.

"I get a lot ot people telling me stories, but

I've never had any one call me up and tell me

to get over there because there's a Bigfoot

running around. Until one falls on my deskor the back of my truck, I won 't claim there

are any here. Any sightings around here are

probably just me in my bathrobe."

Burrough does add, however, that if there

is a Bigfoot in a national park, it would be

considered wildlife and therefore protected.

"So remem ber," he says, "it's not okay to com e

and harass the wildlife by playing recorded

calls at Five in the mornin g. Th at just irritates

campers and the wildlife we know is here."

But wh at d o we really know is, or isn t,

here? Is it possible for som ethin g previously

unknown to science to be l iving in the

Chickasaw National Recreation Area?

As it turns out, the answer may be yes.

DR. JEFF KELLY IS A UNIVERSITY

of Oklahoma professor and a

member of the Oklahoma Bio-

logical Survey, the state agency charged

with cataloging flora and fauna. As luck

would have it, in 2 0 0 3 , Kelly completed

an exhaustive, yearlong inventory of al th evertebrates in the park. Kelly said the in ven-

tory involved sophisticated remote cameras,

mammal traps, baiting and tracking stations,

scent posts, nocturn al searches, audio calling

tapes, and driving park roads late at night to

record every anim al. Th e result?

"The best finding we had was a species

called the marsh rice rat," says Kelly. "That

was a new county record. Otherwise, it was

the usual stuff.

No Bigfoot? No evidence ofBigfoot?

"We have no records of curre nt ot historicspecimens ofBigfoot in the state of Oklah om a,



Kelly, with an admirably straight delivery.

Hallm ark, however, claims he does have the

proof: a fuzzy p hotog raph of a large creature

taken in the park, fingerprints bigger than

any hu man 's, plaster casts of footprints, even

Bigfoot ha it samples painstakingly extracted

from Bigfoot...droppings.

They are simians, and they groom each other

tor ticks or fleas and things,

says HiilJmark. Soonet or later,

they'll swallow a hair, so you go

out an d collect the sc specimens

and bring them back and look

at tbem unde r the microscope.

Then you 'll find a simian hair,

because simian hair is the only

one with a medulla, a feeding

tube dow n the center of the hair.

Humans don't have it.

Aquickltiternetsearch, how-

ever, reveals that most human

hair does indeed have a medulla, so It remains

to be seen whether Hallmark's evidence is from

Bigfoot or an itinerant camper. Hallmark

doesnr offer to show me his specimens ;md,

not being a scatologist, I don't press.

What Ha l lmark is eager to show me is

Jeff Meldrum, PhD is

o Bigfoot researcher

based in I daho.

of a skeptical pub lic.

We went after irrefutable proof, and the

fingerprints are that, Hallmark says. No

human I've ever seen has fingers like these.

I've got prints that are over three-and-a-balf

inches long withou t a joint in them.

Hallmark collected the prints by baiting

park trash cans with cups of Fig N e w tons

placed under a bag of popcorn.

The popcorn is to get the oil on

their hands before they grab the

cup, says Hallmark.

D e sp i t e w ha t he cons ide r s

itonclad evidence, the scientific

response to his prints bas been

tepid . We sen t these finger-

prints off, and we never heard

a ny th ing , s ays H a l lm a r k . I

t r i e d s e nd ing t he m to s o m e

professor at Idaho State , Jeffsomething or other, and he never

acknowledged them.

Tha t would be Dr. Jeff Meldrum , a professor

of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State

University. In the murky, freewheeling world

of cryptozoology, where the term Bigfoot

researcher can mean anything from delti-

H E RE AREPRO^/^LY JU ST M E MY T

tbe evidence he says is irrefutable proof of

the creature's existence. Anyone can make

a plaster cast of a track, but you can't argue

with a fingerprint, says Hallm ark. He hands

m e a fast-food soft-drink cup wrapped in

clear tape.

Under the tape I can see the telltale wbo rls

and ridges of large prints that have been

dusted and sealed. W het her tbey com e from

a Bigfooc or a man of Shaq-like dimension s,

I canno t say, hut Hallmark is convinced this

sional wackos and two guys with a six-pack

an d a camcorder to serious, albeit amateur

weekend aficionados, Meldrum is the closest

thing the field has to an establishment voice.

He's an anomaly: a teal .scientist who doesn't

make any bones about his conviction that

there is something tmexplained out tbere.

Unfortunately for Hallmark, Meldrum isn't

quite buyitig into his fingerprints.

He sent some to me, Siiys Meldtum. While

I am not qualified to offet an expert opinion

Hono bia Bigfoot Festival organ izer

including LaVelle Rose and Katie Co

b u m , swap Bigfoot stories at Clanc

Country Store in Honobia .

an informed opinion.

Meldrum says he collaborated wit

rensics ex pert in Texas on Hallmark's

H e had a much more lengthy look

prints, and he was convinced they w

distinguishable from h um an p rint pat

says Me ldru m. Of course, just how or dissimilar any Bigfoot palm ot fing

would be from a huma n's remains to b

I suppose. But there just wasn't a who

compelling evidence tbat came out o

M e l d r u m a d m i t s he has had l

interaction with the Bigfoot p heno

east of the Rocky Mo untain s. That'

bias against the possibility, says M e

I just have my hands full out here

with the data in my own backyard.

Meldrum didn ' t p lan to be a B

researcher. I got drawn into the sub

tively wh en 1 first examined footprin



spuriou s hoaxes or misidentifications

is getting people to

he n I can get people to do that, they

s about tbe

s and remain bidden

sense. There were periods of time when dift ren t

habitats had much different extension across

the contin ent, and it's very possible that some

of those po pulations could have been isolated

in out-of-the-way islands of habitat uniisLial

or odd for a primate to be in. I 'm dubious

abou t the repon s that com e in from evety state

in tbe union, but when you look across the

country and follow the arboreal forests across

the top of [be country and back down across

the Appalachians and into the Deep South,

youVe got so me very rugged, sparselypopulated areas."

Hmm, tugged, sparsely popu-

lated areas of the Deep South?

Sou nds a lot like a certain part of

Oklahoma known in these parts

as Little Dixie.

Charles Hallmark

believes the finger

prints on this cup

are proof that Big

foot type creatures

DESPI'lH THE LACK OF

evidence , Oklahoma cont inues

to be an un l ike ly bu t pop ula r

ho tbed oi purported Bigfoot activity and

homeg rown "research." In what has become

a broadcast news cliche, local reporters and

amateur documenta ry f i lmmakers a l ike

have ventured into the woods to tecotd for

posterity various rustlings in the dark.

The results, however, are more akin to

C Blair Witch roject than National Geo-

graphic. In Bigfootville a show that regularlyairs on tbe Travel Ch an nel , an in trepid

team of filmmakers travels to Oklahoma

in search of Bigfoot. And they find him,

too. At least there was someone out there in

tbe darkness throwing rocks at the camera

and s tomping th rough the woods .

But none of this is really new. Bigfoot has

been atound for some time. According to a

1994 article in Outdoor Oklahoma che states

first recorded Bigfoot sighting occurred in

1849, when a trapper neat Eagletown repotted

a "man-beast" along the Little River. Other

sightings followed: in 191 5, two sightings in



hamlet on the Pushmataha/LeFlore

line. Infact, they'd like to invite you to

in his honor.

We think the Honobia Bigfoot Fes

going to grow into something big, says H

resident atie Cogburn. The intetest in

has really been sparked, and we hop e t

a whole lot more with this Festival.Rather than view the publicity as a n

Honobians have decided to embrace B

is a uniq ue cultural heritage, an excuse

a good time and an opportunity to s

positive light on their little corner of th

Take a local legend, add a few enthu

suppo rters, and th e result is the first H

Bigfoot Festival September 30 an d O c

at the H onobia Comm unit)- ' Cetiter.

We're basically trying to prom ote th

says Cog bu rn, w ho lives less than half

from one of the numerous sightings

Ho nob ia. We're looking at it as a po

economic developm ent tool for an ec

cally dep ressed area. It's such a beautiR

and it's a shame no on e knows abo ut

When asked if she believes in B

Co gb urn just smiles and says, I belie

festival is going to be a lot of fun.

But there is no shortage of true

ers who gather to swap yarns at Cla

Country Store in Honobia . Legend

half-whispered tales of gian t, upri ghabound in these mounta ins .

Honobia native Ronny Hammer rec

story told by his grandfather abou t a t

the-centur) ' occurrence on nearby W

Stair Mountain.

My grandpa was a little boy wh

parents had a cabin over there on the

tain, says Ham mer, sixty-two. On e

LaVelle Rose custodian of wh at she

believes could be Bigfoot hair holds up

a photo of her daughter with a Bigfoot

impersonator.

near Hon obia in 19 51 . one near W ilburto n

in 1956, and the list goes on sporadically

through the years, all remarkably similar:

large, hairy, uprigh t creature, only a glimpse

before it was gone.

Kyle Jo hn so n has heard it all before. As

th e O k la h o ma D e p a r tme n t o f W i ld l i f e

Con servation's resident biologist for the massive

wildlife manag emen t areas in far sou theastern

Oklaboma, Johnson lives in the heart of the

state's most active Bigfoot area. I cotild alm ost

hear the oh-no-n ot-this-again sigh escape his

lips when I asked his opinio n on Bigfoot.

1 he departm ent's stance on Bigfoot is

that ic doesn 't exist, Joh nso n says flatly. 1

can go out anywhere in the woods around

here and easily find signs of every anima l t hat

lives here, but I've never seen any evidence

of a Bigfoot,

Just don't say that to the residents of Hon o-

bia. If Bigfoot does indeed exist, he's got a

~



manlike creature weighing Four

get in trouble for shooting this thing, so

wo-year-old Riley Don ica grew u p

moun tains around Hono bia ;ind

ba. "I wou ldn't be surprised if it

"Th is is pretty wild countr\'.

e sucb concerns a local Cboctaw woman

to explain the mean ing of old C hoctaw

Kiamichi meant. She thought awbile

s in the Red River basin w ould go up

iamichi River until tbey got to a certain

guides wouldn't go any further up

y to the possibilit}' tbere's always

le Rose doesn't scare easily, and neithe r

tains hu ntin g and fishing, and be's never

yth ing at all," she says. But abou t two

s ago at their cahin, somethin g happened.

thing called out, an d it wasn't anythin g

tbe most awtu soun d. It mad e the hair

stand up on the backs oFour

necks. Odell has hunted these

mountains all his liFe, and

be said be's never, ever heard

anything like that."

LaVelle's husband also has

found strange hair he can't

identify "It really smells bad,"says LaVelle. She offers t he bag

to me. I open it and sniff the

coarse brown hair inside, it

stinks, like a deer hunter who's

gone overboard with the botded

doe-in-beat. Whatever i t came

From—hairy man or bairy beast—is

in desperate need oFa batb.

LaVelle is giving tbe sample to tellow

Honobia resident Cbarles Branson so be can

send it off to be tested. Branson describes

bimselFas a "100 percent believer."

"Sure, I 've seen them," says Branson.

"They're all over the country up bere, and I

promise you, it's no joke. No one around here

would be dum b enough to put on a monkey

suit and walk around in the woods. There

are a lot more sightings than you think, but

most people don't report them."

Perhaps the most inFamous recent sigbting

occurred in 200 0 just a mile or two dow n tbe

road, when a local named Tim Humphreys

claimed his family was repeatedly terrorizedby a group oF hairy, manlike creatures. Tbe

report generated a fair amount ot publicity

with articles in the Daily Oklahoman and Tulsa

WorU:md before long, Hon obia found itself

the epicenter of a hurgeoning BigFoot buzz.

"You wouldn't believe bow many calls we

get From people wanting to come down here

and look for BigFoot," says Cogburn, "people

from all over and internationally. Th e Texas

BigFoot Research Center called just the otber

day. and they're coming . We bave people down

here hunting BigFoot all the time."

A bunc h oF them are staying over at some

cabins in Oc tavia this week end," says Festival

committee member Bill Babcock. "It's like

that every weekend."

However the rest oFthe world may Feel about

tbe veracity oFarea BigFoot sightings, H ono bia

residents display a remarkable protectiveness

A fingerprint analysis prepared by

Charles Hallmark shov/s a human print

left and a large specimen collected

from the Chickosow Notionol Recre-

ation Area right. Above a footprint

of "their" Bigfoot.

" I f I kne w w he r e one

was staying, I wouldn't tell

anyone," says Hammer. "All

they'd do is go up there and

bunt them out. They're not

hurting anybody."

But tbe ques t ion remains :Does Bigfoot really roam tbese

woods? Again, the science says

no . In 20 02 , the biological survey

conduc ted an in tens ive twenty-

four -hour inventory of Beavers

Bend Resort Park, whicb lies well

within Bigfoot's presumed territory.

"We didn't turn anything up there, either,"

says Kelly.

N TH E END , DOES IT REALLY MAT-

ter? Maybe Bigfoot is as real as each

of us chooses to make him, and in an

ever-shrinking world increasingly bereft oF

mystery, perhaps it 's not crazy to want to

believe in something Fantastic, something

beyond our abil i ty to understand or ana-

lyze. Tb e sweaty-palm ed seven-year-old in

me cer ta inly wants to think so, even som e

twenty-seven years la ter and a l ife t ime

spent t rudging a round the woods wi thout

so much as a peep From Bigfoot.

One recent evening, I drove up into themounta ins sur rounding Honobia , pa rked

the truck on a logging road, and took a stroll

in the woods. As I walked along under the

sheltering can opy oF trees, 1 though t that if

Bigfoot doesnt live in Oklahoma, maybe be

should con sider relocating. I can th ink oFfew

areas prettier than our parks and mountains

and no friendlier people anywhere.

I sat on a rock and watched the sun go

dow n thro ugh a break in the trees. OFF in

the distance, a branch snapped, and I sud-

denly realized just how dark it was getting.As the shadows grew long, I hurried my

way back to the truck. It was time to get ofF

that mountain. I wasn't scared. I mean, who

believes in Bigfoot, right? • ^

Th e Honobia Bigfoot Festival runs September

30 to October 1 from 9 a.m. to 6p.m. The es-

tival includes a Bigfoot hunt, food vendors, arts

and crafts, storytelling anda Bigfoot wedding.

580) 244 -5292 or honobiabigfootfestival

com. For area accommodations, try Beavers

Bend Lodge a t eavers Bend Resort Park ten

miles north of Broken Bow. 580) 494-6179

Who Believes in Bigfoot (1)

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