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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.
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' 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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
~
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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
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