13. The Fouke Monster, the Arkansas Bigfoot, became a Hollywood star in the early 1970s
If it exists, Bigfoot presents itself as a very adaptable creature. After all, Sasquatch sightings have been recorded from the chilly climes of the Pacific Northwest to the humid swamps of Fouke, Arkansas. It was on May 2, 1971, that Bifoot made his appearance as the Fouke Monster in this Arkansas town. as it was known, attacked the home of Betty Ford (not that one), reaching through a screen window to grab her sleeping form. Her husband and brother-in-law chased it away, and the next day large footprints were found alongside massive scratch marks on the porch. Soon everyone in Fouke claimed to see the beast.
What would otherwise have remained an obscure, local legend was transformed by the release of The Legend of Boggy Creek in 1972, which grossed an astonishing $20 million at the box office. The film’s power lies in its eerie mixture of real interviews with eyewitnesses and dramatized events, including the attack on the Fords’ home. The boundaries between fact and fiction are blurred most effectively, in the same way as The Blair Witch Project decades later. With so many stories about Bigfoot coming in response to other peoples’ accounts, the importance of Boggy Creek to the legend cannot be overestimated.