164. Bigfoot: The Fouke Monster 1

0:15 On May 3rd, 1971 the Texarkana Gazette published the first report of a large, hairy, bipedal ape like creature which seemed to be roaming the area around Boggy Creek in Falk, Arkansas. Soon witnesses would report a Bigfoot like critter that was slim, fast and gave off an incredibly horrible smell. But that wasn't all that was terrifying about this beast of Boggy Creek. The thing had a habit of letting out a deep and guttural yell or scream that sent shivers down your spine after hearing it come from the deepest and thickest parts of the nearby woods. The specific account that The Gazette reported on came directly from the Ford family, who claimed to have witnessed this enormous beast reached its hand in through one of their open windows and attempt to enter the house by use of their home's back door. This claim was corroborated by a total of five adults from both the Ford and Taylor families who all swore on its authenticity. From there the stories flooded in from the area of run insurance with the beasts both before and after the incident at the Fords as mentioned in Lyle Blackburn's book The Beast of Boggy Creek, The True Story of the Falk Monster. One man even reported that he took a few shots at it with his old service rifle from his time back in the army. In fact, Blackburn was able to find evidence of a Bigfoot like creature in the area as far back as 1851, where on May 9th an article was published in the

1:45 Memphis Enquirer about a set of hunters who reported a large ape like creature trying to capture a calf in the herd of cattle. He also made mention of an article from 1856 that highlighted a group of men on horseback that were out attempting to capture a quote UN quote Wildman. This encounter is unique as it does not end peacefully as is the norm in Bigfoot reports from around the country, but rather it ended with the creature attacking one of the men and its horse as they approached it, leaving the man missing an eye and a gnarly bite wound on his shoulder. This particular report is more on par with some of the more infamous reports of the modern times and is completely in line with the Falk monster that has been thrust into a limelight of cryptozoology and pop cultural like The Beast is mean and unlike its famous and other friendly cousin in the northwest portion of the country, this version is said to stalk the woods and swamps of southern Miller County and only to turn and threaten all those it comes in contact with.

2:44 Sometimes it's all talk and sometimes a man ends up throwing off his horse and gets his eye ripped out. Well, today we dive into the story of the famed Falk monster. Welcome back to Infinite Rabbit Hole. Imagine this line represents the time present 1985 Future Past Prior to this point in time, somewhere here in the past, the timeline spewed into this gadget, creating an alternate 1985 alternate Einstein reality for everyone.

3:54 Else, welcome back to the infinite rabbit hole. I'm your host Jeremy, and today we're diving into the Falk Monster, AKA the Beast of Boggy Creek, AKA the Jonesville Monster. Now I want to explain something real quick. This is actually going to be a two-part series and you're going to get a bonus episode next week. This episode that you're going to listen to today is the background story behind the Falk monster, how it came to be, some of the more famous things that have happened in relation to said monster and some of the bigger sightings. So the the ones that are very story critical, we'll talk about today, now, next week.

4:35 I have a whole episode dedicated to nothing but sightings and encounters of the Falk monster. And let me tell you, some of these are incredible. I love them. They're phenomenal. Bigfoot is my thing. Everyone knows that the Falcon monster is a local Bigfoot creature. Some people will call these Bigfoot Urban legends, or Bigfoot legends for short, and that's exactly what this is. This is our first coverage on a location base Bigfoot, but it will by far not be the last. Trust me, there is. Oh man, there's a lot. There's at least at least a dozen that I can think of just off the top of my head. But before we jump into the Falc monster and the story behind it, I just want to remind you guys that was something as simple as leaving a five star rating and a review. Telling everybody that this is a great podcast means a lot. It really does.

5:22 And if you guys could do that for me, that would be absolutely great. And then of course, you know, follow us on X Instagram, Facebook, head on over to infiniterattlehole.com for all the latest updates. We have some pretty cool stuff coming up very, very soon. So or keep your ears open, keep your eyes to the screens. So without further ado, everybody, here is my report on the Falcon monster. I'll see you on the other side a crazy few weeks. The 1st events of the famed story of incidents that occurred at the Ford's property began with a footprint found in the area near the property that the men were going to fish. And just a few days after the two families moved into their new home.

6:08 The continual issues with an unknown creature stalking the property and the families that were targeted, meaning the Fords and the tailors are famous for being the proverbial straw on the camel's back that sent the small town of Falca, Arkansas into the limelight of the entire country. Everyone had their eyes on Falcon, a small property just a few miles away from the infamous Creek where the creature would eventually be known to roam. The first encounter with the actual beast that is detailed is from the point of view of Elizabeth Taylor and Patricia Ford, where one night they heard it walking on the porch but never actually saw the creature. The very next night, the women claimed that they witnessed a large hand come through the curtains as Elizabeth sat in the front room. The encounter is described by Elizabeth Taylor in the May 1st, 1971 edition of the Texarkana Gazette quote. At first I thought it was a bear's paw, but it didn't look like that.

7:01 It had heavy hair all over it, and it had claws. I could see its eyes. They look like coals of fire. Brothers Don and Bobby Ford responded to the scream that ensued with guns in hand as they ran around the back of the house, where they captured the beast and the beam of their flashlights before they fired several shots which both men claimed to have hit the creature a few times. Immediately after the animal ran off, they gave a call to the local constable, Ernest Walraven, who promptly arrived at the Ford's residence with another shotgun in hand. The three men, Bobby Ford, Don Ford and Charles Taylor, SAT and discussed the incident on the very porch that the woman said was visited by someone unknown the night prior.

7:43 As the men were talking, one of the men noticed the beast was back in the tree line and once again they all opened fire. This time they claimed to have seen the creature fall as a result of the volley of bullets being fired at it. As the men were walking out to the area where they thought they saw it fall, the women began to screaming from the inside of the house. Bobby Ford turned back in a hurry to help the women but was attacked by the creature as he was climbing the ladder to the porch. Bobby was thrown to the ground, the scuffle and quickly rose to his feet before running as fast as he could to the front of the house and falling through the front door. After this incident, the men no longer could find the creature and quickly recalled the constable. This time they found a singular 3 toed footprint in a nearby freshly plowed field. There was plenty of damage done to the house itself as a window was broken and metal shavings were found around the base of the building.

8:34 A follow up Article 3 days later would report that there were multiple footprints found in the immediate area of the property and that Bobby Ford was also being treated at a nearby hospital for shock and some pretty nasty scratches. Two weeks later on Tuesday, June 15th, another article would be published which described the set of tracks that were discovered by yauthor Kennedy two days earlier in the freshly plowed soybean field near the southern fork of Boggy Creek that he was leasing. These prints brought a new person critical to the story by the name of Willie Smith. Willie owned the property that yauthor Kennedy grew his soybeans on and lived in the area all his life. He claimed to have seen the same Prince many times before.

9:16 He even went as far as to say that his sister claimed to have seen the creature for the first time almost 40 years earlier, in 1908, with his first sighting coming in 1955, in which he shot at the creature 15 times before the creature returned a few days later, throwing things at his dog. Willie would be the first person to make the connection that whatever it was, it used the Creeks that encircled Falk and touched many other smaller towns in the area as pathways or even as places to live. Then on June 16th, another incident showed up in local papers that described the sighting of the creature by an AL Williams and AL Tipton just a quarter mile away from the Prince found in the soybean field. The men described the creature as only about 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall and was best described as a small ape or a large monkey. Side note, this small stature would later be proven to be something odd, as the creature would typically be described as several feet taller in most encounters, but this could be evidence that there was a breeding population in the area and that this one was simply a juvenile money. The sightings became so plentiful that June that the local radio station offered up a reward of $1090.00 to whoever would bring in a live specimen of whatever the monster was. A few other rules that the radio station highlighted was that there must be absolutely no property damage in the process of the creature's capture, and that after the creature was was turned into the radio station, it would then be property of the radio station.

10:48 This last bit would later be countered by Sheriff Leslie Greer with his own statement claiming that it would in fact not be property of the radio station, rather it would belong to Miller County. A man by the name of Raymond Skogan's would also offer up $200.00 of his own money as a reward to anyone who could shine light on the issue as well. Again, a stipulation was included that the creature would be captured completely unharmed. As we have seen in many other situations in which at 40 an event took place or a creature has been spotted and a bounty has been placed on said subject, there was a huge influx of people who wanted their chance at earning the prize. And just like in the events of injured Cole, the Ozark, Howler, the Kelly Green Men, the Snallygaster and many others, this turned out to be a bad idea. Many people showed up from other portions of the country to try and bag themselves a monster.

11:38 This brought a huge influx of guns, alcohol and people. The locals soon began having major issues with people cutting fences, strangers on their property, random gunshots echoing through the area, and people being loud and obnoxious. The issue with the outsiders became more of a concern to the locals than the beast, and soon after it all began. A rule was put in place that banned the carrying of firearms outside of hunting season in the general area. Fortunately for all that were involved, there were no serious accidents during this influx of visitors. Aside from a plethora of cases involving property damage and drunken rowdiness, the locals and the Sheriff's Department kept things in line for the most part.

12:22 Some of the locals even turned this increase of outside visitors into a financial gain. Willie Smith sold the cast that were made in this bean field for quite a bit of money. A local 15 year old boy by the name of Perry Simmons gave tours of the Ford house for a dollar a person. Perry noticed that there were times when the road in front of the house was so overrun with people that traversing it was impossible. Simmons's stepfather, Joe Simmons, was the owner of the house in which the Fords were moving into, and Perry found it to be a great opportunity to make some cash that summer. Smoky Crabtree before the now famous Ford Encounter. The beast, now famously known as either the Falk Monster or the Beast of Boggy Creek was known by another name, the Jonesville Monster.

13:10 Jonesville being a small town just six miles southwest of Falk in 1965, Lynn Crabtree would have an encounter that would become extremely important in the history of the then Jonesville monster. Early one evening, Lynn would set out into the woods with a 20 gauge shotgun loaded with squirrel shot in an attempt to hunt some small game. As he sat with his back against a tree, a commotion erupted from the nearby pond that sounded like some horses were running into the water. This was not alarming to Lynn, as there were plenty of horses in the area and sometimes they would go into the shallow waters when the flies got really bad. Then he heard what he believed to be his dog. Screaming in pain, Lynn began running down the pathway to an old fence in the direction of the cries where he believed his dog may have got tangled up in. But before he got there, the sound that he thought was his dog started up again and this time it was mixed with some groans and grunts that sounded like it came from something much bigger.

14:09 As he was walking to see what was going on, he stopped in horror as his eyes set on an 8 foot tall man like creature covered in long dark reddish brown hair with his back to Lynn. Whatever it was was clearly agitated and must have been why the horses sought the safety of the pond. The thing stood roughly 30 steps away from where Lynn had stopped as it turned and began to walk towards the young man, completely oblivious of Lynn's presence. Then everything changed as Lynn startled the creature, who then began to look over Lynn with curiosity, in which Lynn responded by shouting and waving his gun around to try to scare it off. But the creature never stopped walking towards him, which then caused Lynn to react by raising his shotgun and shooting the thing in the head before shooting it twice more, which seemed to, for the most part, not faze the beast at all.

15:02 With the realization that he was not properly equipped to defend himself against the now possibly pissed off Behemoth, Lynn ran for his life back to his parents house where his parents and a few of their guests were conversing. Julius Crabtree AKA Smokey Lynn's father, would go out to the location in question once Lynn calmed down and was able to tell his story. Smokey and his wife June, also Lynn's mother, had heard the three gunshots and were concerned for their child due to both him being so scared and hearing the report of the gun go off multiple times in succession. There, Smokey found where his son had shot his gun into a tree at a height of about 10 feet high, which makes sense if his son was aiming up towards a towering 8 foot tall creature. The shots would have traveled higher than his target if he had missed, but he was unable to find any shells. This encounter is so important to the history of the Jonesville or Falk monster because this story did exactly what the Fords encounter did and brought out many other reports from the locals of something stalking the woods. An encounter just three miles away from the Crabtree property would become another very famous event, as it was one that would be portrayed in the famous docudrama titled The Legend of Boggy Creek of 1972.

16:21 Mary Beth Searcy was a teenager at the time when she was working on her schoolwork. As the sun went down, her older sister asked Mary Beth, as she could tack up a blanket over the window to help keep the cool spring air out in hopes to prevent the baby from getting sick. As she stood at the window, Mary Beth noticed a large dark shadow on two legs walking in their yard. When the creature exited the shadows of the trees and entered into the moonlight, she could clearly see that whatever it was, it was covered in long shaggy hair. She screamed and the house full of the women of the family were left sleepless the rest of the night. It may not have had the reach like the Ford Encounter with the radio, TV and newspapers covering it, but the Crabtree encounter certainly got the locals excited and ready to haunt a monster. 20 locals showed up with rifles tracking dogs and horses in hopes of finding this beast, but unfortunately they never found anything other than one man claiming that something had spooked his horse, but whatever it was never really revealed itself.

17:23 Although the locals excitement over the monster quickly dies after the failed search, Smokey was not ready to give up, and good thing he didn't. In a 1971 interview with a Texarkana Gazette, Smokey would mention that for some time after the event, their dogs wouldn't go near the woods on their property. He was hoping to get them out there to try to chase it out, but the dogs wouldn't budget. Then he came up with the idea to use the sound of an injured rabbit to try to get it lured out. But what he got in response was a series of strange noises from deep within the tree line. Quote. It started making a noise like a house cat, then went into a chatter something like a goat, then into a noise something like an owl. After a while it seemed to get annoyed and it made a sound like a cross between a scream and a growl. Now during my research I discovered that Smoky Crabtree had published a book telling his side of the story in a relation to the Falk Monster and the filming of the movie Legend of Boggy Creek.

18:20 The book is called Smokey and the Falcon Monster and was published in 1974. It took a long time and a pretty penny, but I found a copy and I ordered it even though the description said it was in bad shape. Now another side note, I discovered from a pretty obscure source that the book was republished at some time with a slight change to the book's appearance. The original book had a title section on the bottom of the cover that was filled in light blue, and the reprint had this section colored white. I found this out after I purchased the book, but I was very pleased to see that I had purchased one of the original prints which made this new addition to my library that much more special. And when the book arrived it was like Christmas morning. As these kinds of books from people who were intimately involved in such a story mean an absolute ton to me, the book was indeed rough. Not only were the pages yellowed and stiff from age, but the cover has two large brown circles from God knows what. But none of that matters as I was now well on my way to getting a really beautiful and rare behind the scenes look at what life was really like during the Falk monster mania. A lot of this book actually has nothing to do with the monster at all.

19:25 In the first few chapters you read mostly about his young life and his experience of almost losing his two brothers to drowning in the Creek behind their house, to the death of his father and dog Sputter, and how his mother raised him and his six siblings all by herself with zero electricity and $29.00 a month for a salary. It wasn't until page 84 out of the 142 pages that we get to begin hearing his story in relation to the Falk or Jonesville monster, when he begins telling his side of his son Lynn's encounter all squirrel hunted the big screen. In 1972, a docudrama movie titled The Legend of Baki Creek hit Drive in theaters everywhere. This creature feature was director Charles B Pierce's introduction to the world of directing and would arguably be one that he is most remembered for. Along with the movie itself being so recognizable by name alone, the movie's official poster, now VHS or DVD and Blu-ray cover, became an instant classic all on its own. Originally painted by the then soon to be world famous artist for his work with George Lucas on the physical character imagery of the top tier series Star Wars in 1977, Ralph Mcqueary would be given full reign of design for one of the most recognizable images in the world of cryptozoological fandom today.

20:47 In 1970, Pierce was living in Texarkana and owned an advertisement firm, which was how he earned the money he needed in order to propel his dream career in the arts. When the 1971 Ford Encounter became well known, Pierce instantly latched onto it as an opportunity to drive into the director role of a film of his own. He would eventually find someone to fund his project and the likes of Mr. Ledwell of Leadwell and Sun Enterprises, who he had previously done advertisement work for. When asked what he wanted to make his film about by Mr. Ledwell, Pierce responded. Quote I want to do one about the booger that's jumping on folks down the road there.

21:27 Finding someone to fund the project ended up being the easy part. The hard part was convincing anyone, in fact, to be a part of the movie when very few of them even wanted the project to happen, let alone in their town. Eventually he convinced enough people to put his plans into action and the documentary style drama was officially ready to be created, one of which was none other than Smokey Crabtree, who worked as a tour guide of sorts for Pierce to finding filming locations. The cast was made-up of mostly locals from Falcon Texarkana who either played themselves or stood in for those that did not want to be part of the project. And eventually the town slowly started to get behind the movie, even to a point where the Sheriff's Office was providing cruisers for props and closing down sections of the road for filming. The big payoff of the movie was the creature itself, which was created from a costume that Pierce ordered from a place in Los Angeles that they would eventually alter with locally sold wigs.

22:22 Although this film had a no name director, no real actors, minimal recording equipment, and a writer who had never written a movie script, the movie became an instant cult classic and terrified young children and drive ins all across the country. Due to its initial G rating, The Legend of Boggy Creek became an instant classic and is still consistently talked about among movie and monster aficionados alike. The movie sported a never before seen approach to a documentary which has since been dubbed A docudrama, which is literally a portmento, meaning a dramatized documentary. Those with encounter sat in front of the camera and told their stories in a way that made you feel like you were listening to them relive their encounters from the day before. As you listen to each and everybody's story, a dramatized version was played out on the screen that made you feel like you were really watching it happen. This movie has been picked apart by many throughout the years and to many this is simply just a drama with a spit of horror in it in the shape of a Bigfoot like creature which shares no to very little actual details about any real events. But that isn't true.

23:28 This movie does an incredible job at using real events as told by the residents themselves to retell their story and terror. That was the Falk monster. Every scene is a representation of someone's story and yes, a few of them are slightly inaccurate as a few names were changed due to not having permission by the original experiencer to use their likeness or a specific scene being exaggerated a little to add entertainment value. Remember this is a movie and is made to entertain the person watching it, so this is understandable. So if you want a good idea of what happened in a visually dramatized format, The Legend of Boggy Creek is an incredible place to start. Just remember that the movie was released in 1972, so there are many parts in the movie that will show its age.

24:13 After the movie was brought to the international market by Halco International, who promptly and effectively distributed the masterpiece, the once sleepy town of Falk once again became the epicenter of monster lovers from every nook and cranny of the world. But this time everything was much worse. On September 16th, 1973, the Texarkana AR Jay CS, AKA the Junior Chamber of Commerce, placed a reward of $100,000 for the live capture of the creature now more commonly known as the Beast of Baki Creek. This of course brought the shotguns and monster hunters back to the front steps of the sleepy town. But with these creature hungry out of towners came a plethora of letters, with some even addressed to the Falk monster itself. According to Blackburn, the mayor's office once delivered a bundle of more than 800 letters, but the circus didn't stop there.

25:07 A song simply called Falk Monster was released by a band named Billy Cole and the Falk Monsters. Souvenir shops and carts began popping up with some of the locals trying to make do with a new wave of enthusiasts with trinkets such as replica casts, stickers, T-shirts, ashtrays, postcards, among many other things. With the revived interest in the creature came a wave of sightings that many claim are not very credible, but there are a few that stand as intriguing, especially if the reports were from locals. One of which was by Orville Scoggins, who was previously a very strong skeptic to the matter who claimed to have seen an upright, walking, black haired beast strolling across his bean field.

25:50 Scogan's estimated the critter to be only 80 to 90 lbs, which would trend on the smaller side of the reported sightings but not unheard of and as I mentioned earlier, may have been a sign of a healthy breeding pair and their offspring. The particular sighting fueled an official investigation by Constable Red Wall Raven in which he and his officers found a trail of five inch wide tracks that spanned an eighth of a mile across Scogan's Bean Field. Other details were mentioned in reports, including that they were three toed and had a 40 inch stride. Another well known encounter is that of the Giles brothers, who claimed to have the creature jump into the bed of their truck and attack the motorcycles that they had strapped down. This was yet another outlier as there were very few actual sightings where the creature made physical harm to either a person such as Bobby Ford or Property. In this case, although the monster wasn't to blame for a lot of the property damage post release of the film, another critter was the fans of the film that had come to infest the area began paying special attention to Smokey Crabtree in Jonesville.

26:59 The issue got so bad on his property that Smokey and a group of monster seekers ended up in the Sheriff's Office one night due to Smokey chasing and threatening them with a shotgun. Smokey would go on to get rightfully pissed at Charles B Pierce due to the fact that he was now a millionaire due to the movie, but he and the locals of the area that contributed so much were left not only without any compensation, but now had to deal with people trespassing and infringing on their privacy. Some were even coming onto properties where the film had shot a scene just to snap a twig off a tree that they had seen in the movie. So in 1974, Smokey Crabtree wrote a memoir on his experience with the times before, during and after the crave that was the film The Legend of Baki Creek.

27:46 Unfortunately, there were two attempts at making a sequel, or at least a movie based off the creature, the first of which was a horrible movie by the name of Return to Baki Creek. This movie was directed by Tom Moore, who enlisted big names such as Dawn Well of Gilligan's Island, but no stars from any other successful projects were going to fix this movie. The concept of the new movie completely abandoned the docudrama style for one of a more traditional script, the second of which was simply titled Boggy Creek 2, which was successful in recruiting Pierce as the director, but ultimately flopped as well. The movie was so bad that Pierce claimed it to be the worst he had ever done Smokey's Bones.

28:27 On November 27th of 1991, James Mackey and a friend of his came across a very strange corpse on his property near Karnak, Texas, about 60 miles southwest of Falk, Arkansas. The body of whatever this critter was was almost 8 feet tall and was completely missing its head. One of the first people that Mackey would show the body to was his nephew, who quickly took the body over to his property in Louisiana, where he believed they had possession of a true unidentified creature. Mackie contacted Smokey Crabtree since he was one of the more official voices of the nearby famed Falk monster, and Smokey immediately headed down to take a look and was extremely impressed in how much whatever it was resembled the creature that has been seen in and near Falk for a better part of the decade.

29:16 The only thing that kept him from thinking that this was the exact culprit was the fact that the feat on whatever it was was most likely not the feat that were making the famous 3 Toed prints near Falcon Jonesville. From there, Smokey, Mackey's nephew and another unnamed man made a deal that if this turned out to be a major biological discovery, that the three would share the overall earnings. From this point. Smokey took possession of the corpse and created a display case that was airtight in order to preserve it for future endeavors. Smokey claims to have sent samples to the University of Arkansas, but never heard back with their findings. Author Lyle Blackburn's great investigative research into the true identity of the mystery critter reveals exactly what the story was behind the famous body. In the December 11th, 1991 edition of the Texarkana Gazette, the author explains that the body was that of a Siberian tiger who originally belonged to an exotic animal collector in nearby Jefferson.

30:17 When the tiger passed away from pneumonia, the owner sold the body to a local man who then brought it to a taxidermist who would go ahead and remove the head, claws and pelt before dumping the body, apparently on the Mackie property. Every piece of this reported story was apparently 100% factual, and the body that was found on the Mackie property in Texas was unfortunately that of a Siberian tiger. I include this in this presentation that is a very famous addition to many different tellings of the Falk monster story, but unfortunately it would seem that in this case it has nothing to do with the beast at all footprints. It's unfortunate that the famed smoky Crabtree bones turned out to be nothing substantial, as the evidence a body would provide in the case of the existence of a Sasquatch species would be a huge weight off the shoulders of not only the world of Crypts zoology, but also in all of subjects of 40 in studies. But unfortunately that didn't happen. So in the case of the Falcon monster, we will have to turn to the physical evidence that is properly documented on multiple occasions.

31:22 Footprints. There are not a ton of prints linked to the Falcon monster, such as the ones found by author Kennedy in the bean field he was leasing from Willie Smith. But the ones that do exist that are not replicas of original cast mass produced for souvenirs do tell quite the story. Prior to the famed Ford Encounter, Bobby Ford and a friend named Corky Hill were fishing from the Bank of the Creek when they spotted a strange 3 toed print pressed into the mud. The men never thought much about it other than it being strange, but after the events of the attacks on the Ford house, authorities discovered sporadic 3 toed tracks coming in and out of the immediate area, as well as torn siding on the House that seemed to be made by an animal with three claws. Unfortunately, the evidence of these findings was never documented in a way that we can study now, so other than newspaper articles about the night in question, there isn't anything else to go off of.

32:19 One of the more famous tracks found of the beast was the previously mentioned prints found by author Kennedy. The trackway stretched an area of about 150 yards and originated from the tree line on the edge of the field. The three toed prints were consistent 13.5 inches long, 4.5 inches wide, and had a stride of 57 inches on average. Now side note, this is roughly 6 inches longer than the average human stride, but what stood out the most about the strange footprints was a peculiar 4th digit that set about 5 inches back from the large toe that left a very vague indentation that was barely noticeable, but was present on all of the tracks. Many officials and locals witnessed this particular trackway and all agreed that they had never seen these types of tracks before and these were people who spent most of their lives outdoors in the local area. And for those of you who would like to see a really good picture of one of these prints, there is one on page 117 of Lyle Blackburn's book, The Boggy Creek Casebook. This also stood as the first set of tracks to be properly cast and was done so by a local woman by the name of Jane Roberts, who used her personal stock, a plaster of Paris that she used for her personal arts and crafts, as the local police and population were not versed in the art of casting at the time. But one particular piece of the puzzle was noticed by journalist Jim Powell during the investigation. He was not convinced of the

33:50 authenticity of the trackway, as he was the first to point out that the tracks seemed to purposely not step on any of the bean plants that were in the field. In his opinion, a wild animal would have no sense of the importance of the farmers plants, it would simply walk over or through the plants that maxed out at a height of only two feet tall. But that was not the case in this event, as they were considered to be baby plants and would have been even easier to simply walk on. And seeing how those prints went on for about 150 yards through the field, with very little space between the plants, he found it very odd that none of the plants were damaged. In his opinion, the prints were most likely made by someone who found the plants to be important enough to not damage them.

34:33 Unfortunately, these tracks were on display in the Boggy Creek Cafe when it burned down in the 1970s and are no longer in existence. Tom Zorn, however, was also able to cast a print that he discovered near Boggy Creek in 1973 and is still on display today in the famous Monster Mart small display of evidence for the creature and Falk. Then there were the tracks that span the length of about an eighth of a mile by Orville Scoggins after he spotted what is believed to be a juvenile. As mentioned before, these tracks had a 40 inch stride and were 5 1/2 inches in diameter. There were never any cast or pictures taken of these prints, but reports state that the prints matched those from the Ford case, which were now famously known as three toed prints. A5 toed left footprint was cast near Carter Lake in 2004 by a man named Doyle Holmes, which measured at 15 inches long and 8 1/2 inches wide.

35:29 The one print, which was a part of a small trackway that led out of the water into a nearby Berry Bush, highlighted a clear impression of what appears to be a bunion, or growth under the big toe, which was also present in every left footprint made in the trail of prints left in the muddy shore. So what is it? In May of 2009, Jennifer Bland was driving down an old dirt Rd. between Long Slough and Smith Park when a tall, brown haired covered creature walked in front of her car and disappeared into the trees on the other side of the road. As she slowed down to see if she could see the creature as it traversed the woods, a loud blood curdling scream emanated from its location which made Jennifer quickly change her mind.

36:16 This encounter stands as a very unique and possibly important encounter as it is the only one that I have seen where the Witness describes a snout in her description of the creature. Why, may you ask, is this an important detail? Well, this is not a feature that is typically found in your average Bigfoot encounter. This is however a detail that is not only included in specific species or race of Bigfoot, known as a Gogwit, which is well known to be extremely dangerous, which would help with the understanding the Falk Monster's Brutus nature, but is also a well documented feature in a different Cryptid altogether, the Dog Man. Now I am not saying that I believe that the Falk monster is Guguay or Dogman, I am yet again only reporting on details and drawing lines of possibility. The area of Texarkana is not a known area for dog man activity, but this general area of the country isn't completely lacking in encounters of either creature and could simply be a one off report of a lone animal and may not actually be a Falk monster report at all.

37:18 But you can never say never. But what else can it be Like I do with all cryptids, I look at 3 possibilities of what could be the answer. One, is it actually a new animal? Two, is it misidentification? And three, is it a hoax? Let's start at the beginning. Could it be an undocumented animal? If we take into consideration the famed 3 toed prints, we come up with more questions than answers in this regard, as there are no bipedal 3 toed creatures in the world. This will definitely fall under the category of an undocumented creature if proven to be true. But is it different from a Bigfoot which seems to be the most reasonable encounter? No, and our reason stems from the physical proof of the tracks that are in the pool of evidence.

38:04 All of the tracks that I can see from verifiable sources with three toes do not have the toes spread apart as in the case of, let's say, the Bishopville lizard man. Rather, it looks more like an injury or a deformity that resulted in the loss of the two toes on the outside of the foot. Being that the population is small, inbreeding for multiple generations can cause these kinds of deformities to occur. This has been seen in humans on multiple occasions. But if you want my opinion, this looks like a case of missing toes due to either snapping turtles, alligators, or another form of severe injury. Some people may think that this area of the country doesn't house Gators, but the local CBS affiliate THV 11 published an article on September 27th of 2022 of a giant 12 foot 6 inch alligator pulled out of the Sulfur Spring Wildlife Management Area just outside of Falk, Arkansas with prints simply looking like a typical 5 toed print that is missing. The two outs toes, the large number of five toed prints that are found with no injuries resulting in missing toes that are in the same form and shape as three toed ones, and the local ecology housing many critters that can easily take a toe or two.

39:17 I feel like this is the most probable outcome if it turns out to be an actual cryptozoological creature. What about option two though? Can it be misidentification? A lot of people like to point at these quote UN quote location based Bigfoot variants that are seen in various locations not only around the US but also around the world as being more along the lines of urban legend instead of truth. And the most common explanation for creatures such as the Falk Monster, Honey Island Swamp Monster, Momo AKA the Missouri Monster, the Minerva Monster, the Checo Monster Nabi, and even smaller legends such as the Coal Hollow Monster among many others is the old story of a train crash with circus animals that escaped and created a new population of misplaced creatures. I am not a fan of this personally. That would be a lot of trains crashing with specific animals on board across the country.

40:06 Which may be one of these legends can be blamed on such crash, but the likeliness is low, let alone it being the answer for the Falk monster mystery. What I can see, however, is a chimp or other primate escaping from a private collection or a local zoo of sorts. This happens a lot, and there are plenty of undocumented cases throughout time of these incidents that not only involve primates, but span into all sorts of animals such as big cats, Kangaroos, and even elephants among many others. As for a local animal being misidentified as the Falk monster, I just don't see that being the case either. The only real animal that has an outside chance is the black bear, but I have long not been a fan of this being a possibility in any instance where an upright walking ape is described.

40:52 Due to when a black bear lifts up on its hind legs, it is dramatically different compared to how a human in a costume or Bigfoot would look. There are many videos of bears who walk on their hind legs for short periods of time that just look too far off from what is described. And then there is the last option. What if it's all a hoax? I can guarantee you that a handful of cryptological creatures, accounts, and reports are hoaxed. Unfortunately, this is human nature and honestly it sucks. And the same will go for the Falk monster. But simply due to the sheer number of accounts of run insurance with a famed beast, I do not think this is the case for all of them. So if we take the entire pool of Falcon or Jonesville monster or quote UN quote, Wildman reports from the beginning of recorded history in the area which we delve into exclusively on our next episode. And we take out half for possible hoaxes which may be on the very high end of what the amount of hoaxes actually are. And we take out a few for misidentification of a black bear in reports in which the witness claims to only have seen the animal sitting down, then remove one or two for escaped animals from private collections. We are still left with a very large pool of unexplained sightings and tracks under this evidence alone. I do personally believe that there is, or at least was, an unknown upright walking ape like creature stalking the forests and waterways in Miller County, Arkansas and the surrounding areas Falk.

42:23 It was reporter Jim Powell that first coined the name the Falk Monster in one of his articles about the subject. The name would stick very quickly, but was not something that most of the 800 locals ever really enjoyed having their name attached to. The influx of monster hunters to the area did not leave a good taste in their mouths, and the town never really embraced the creature after that. That didn't stop the area from obtaining many nods of its own to the famous events that followed the Ford's Famous Night, a stretch on US 71 that finds itself dividing the town of Falca, Arkansas, nearly in half is legally called the Monster Expressway. A simple look at Google Maps confirms this is still the case. Just outside of the borders of FALC lies the tourist hotspot called the Monster Mart, where you can only find a handful of souvenirs that commemorate the cryptozoological heavyweight. Sightings are still reported periodically to the local Sheriff's Department, but solid evidence has never been found of the exact nature of what the enigma actually is. And as it would seem, the locals of Falk, Arkansas are just fine with that.

43:37 Well, that is it. That is my coverage of the Falk Monster. Actually, let me take that back. It's not the full coverage as we are going to release his special episode next week. That's right travelers, you get a bonus episode in our off week of nothing but sightings of the Falk monster. Now there are a lot, There's a ton. I got most of my sightings from places like the BFRO database, couple different books, especially the casebook by Lyle Blackburn, a couple other websites from Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, all the local Bigfoot research groups. There's a lot and I narrowed it down to something that would fit probably within 40 minutes of recording. With that being said, you are not done with a Falcon monster. That will continue next week.

44:25 So without further ado, travelers, I'm not going to keep you long. I absolutely love this. I love everything, Bigfoot. You guys already know that about me. That's it. That's all I got. I'll see you next week everybody. And I'll see you in the next fork. The path of the infinite rabbit hole. Bye, I would like to thank you once again for tuning into the Infinite Rabbit Hole podcast. Please make sure to give us a follow in one of those beautiful five star ratings on your podcast Player of Toys. If you would like to join the conversation and stay up to date on all things Infinite Rabbit Hole, head on over to Facebook and search for the Infinite Rabbit Hole Facebook group.

45:08 You'll know it's us when you see the logo. If you would like to help contribute to the 'cause, there are a few ways to do so. First, head on over to anchor dot FM forward slash infant rabbit hole and click on the subscribe button, where for $5 a month you'll get access to all our old episodes that we'll never see the free spotlight ever again. It's horrible stuff, but if you're into that kind of thing and go check that second, head on over to infantrabbithole.com and click on the IRH Merch Shop tab and grab yourself a sweet T-shirt, sticker or whatever else you see that you wouldn't mind on until next time travelers. I'm Jeremy and I'll see you at the next fork in the path of the infinite rabbit hole.

45:51 This line represents the time present 1985 future. Past to this point in time? Has the timeline pewed into the scandal creating 1985 alternate few near Einstein for everyone else?