After our visit to Fouke Arkansas recently (see my previous post on that great town and their super cool local shop, Monster-Mart), I was super thrilled to hear that Lyle Blackurn would be at the Mothman Festival! Lyle has authored the definitive book on the Fouke Monster, "The Beast of Boggy Creek".
I read his book after our visit to Fouke, and I really enjoyed it! It is one of the best books out there about something unexplained.
If you are unfamiliar with the Fouke Monster, it is a bigfoot type creature that has been spotted around Fouke Arkansas for decades. In 1972 the unverified animal was immortalized in the film, "The legend of Boggy Creek".
Mr. Blackburn goes into detail about all of the sightings before and after the film, and he talks at length about the film, how it was made, and its sequels. He discusses and interviews pretty much all of the living people associated with the creature and with the film based on it.
The whole Boggy Creek/Fouke Monster story is so interesting because you have a film based on a legend surrounding a small town, and the film, the legend, and the town develop a bit of a love/hate relationship with each other.
One local resident helped with the film a lot at first, and later he hates the fact that he did. Other locals also helped with the movie, and later wished they had not, as tourists came in and invaded their privacy.
One thing that Blackburn notes is how the movie does follow actual sighting reports pretty accurately, in general. When I watched the film, I figured it was very roughly based on the monster, but Charles B. Pierce did a great job of reproducing documented sightings. Actual witnesses and locations were used when available. Lyle Blackburn includes a chart in the book comparing each movie scene to the individual report!
Blackburn discusses a lot of detail about the film and the very unsuccessful sequels. I enjoyed learning about how much director Charles B. Pierce contributed to the movie, including the soundtrack!
Another area covered by Blackburn that was very fascinating involves the story of a skeleton! The remains of an animal, minus the skull, were discovered and eventually end up in the hands of Smokey Crabtree. He allows some to see the skeleton. The author does a great job of tracing where the remains came from.
Anyway, Lyle Blackburn's "The Beast of Boggy Creek" is just a fun read about one of the few mysteries left in the world. He notes in the book that he leaves out some first hand reports that he found questionable, and only considered credible reports for inclusion in his book.
Talking to him at the Mothman Festival, Lyle seemed like a thoughtful and reasonable fellow himself. I look forward to more books from him in the future! It looks like ANOTHER book will be coming out from him around Halloween!
http://www.lyleblackburn.com/
