Reporter
Monster Inc.
Nighttime field trips, gripping testimonials, scientific seminars: In East Texas, the hunt for Bigfoot is serious business.
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They moved on to the cemetery. Woolheater and Colyer couldn’t find any trace of a pear tree but searched the area anyway, looking at the ground and into the trees for recent signs of a large animal. “If you want to get struck by lightning, you can’t go outside on a sunny day,” Colyer said. “There may be only two thousand of these animals. I’ve spent time in the woods where black bear live, and I’ve never seen a black bear.”
“It’s a one-hundred-and-twenty-to-one shot,” Woolheater said. “You’ve got to find them, but they’re always moving. And now we’re in that lightning-strike area.” At this, he spotted an imprint on the ground and sized it up against his shoe.
ANYONE WHO WONDERS HOW THE TOWN OF JEFFERSON feels about the attention from Bigfoot conferencegoers might remember that “creature” lore has good footing in these swamps. Locals will quickly brag that both the films The Creature From Black Lake and The Legend of Boggy Creek were shot nearby. Along the historic strip in town, tiny stickers in the windows of establishments display their support—“Warning: Protected by a Texas Bigfoot.”
Which is not to say that everyone warmly embraces the idea of Jefferson as a home for Bigfoot lovers. Many of the natives would rather have the focus on their town’s history, not on ghosts or monsters, and Bigfoot is not a subheading under “zoology.” “Well, why has no one found a body?” they’ll ask.
Woolheater and Colyer are receptive to skeptics’ criticisms. “There is no fossil record of higher-order primates in North America,” Colyer acknowledged.
“And we’re trying to find something that is not common or identifiable,” said Woolheater.
The two grew excited as they talked, interrupting each other.
“We understand that’s freaky to a lot of people, but the fact remains—”
“Thousands of people have these stories!”
“Thousands!”
“And there’s only a couple of possibilities as to why that is happening. Either they’re lying to you—”
“Or they’re misidentifying a known animal.”
“So either they’re hallucinating,” continued Woolheater, “or they saw what they saw. Even if one of these people is telling the truth, then something is out there.”
“And both of us are telling the truth,” said Colyer.
Some members of the community shrug and say they’re keeping an open mind—for good reason. At lunch at Lamache’s Italian Restaurant recently, Woolheater and Colyer schmoozed with the Jefferson director of tourism development, Juanita Wakefield-Chitwood. An animated woman with short, frosted hair, Wakefield-Chitwood is tied to Jefferson going back several generations, so she speaks with authority when she boasts, “Here in Jefferson we have eccentric people and we attract eccentric people.”
“I heard the city is officially labeling October 14 through 16 ‘Bigfoot Weekend’ in Jefferson!” Woolheater said.
“That’s right,” Wakefield-Chitwood said. “This conference is huge. I remember the first conference. I was working at the hotel where one of the speakers stayed. He gave me a personal lecture.” She belted out a laugh. Seeing that the others weren’t as amused, she soberly nodded. “It was very interesting.”
“I’d like to have a main town where we can set up a research center,” Woolheater said.
Wakefield-Chitwood pointed to herself.
Colyer piped up. “We were talking about having it here.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Wakefield-Chitwood said with a smile.
“It’s a matter of funding,” Woolheater said. But he continued to warm her up. “We’re going to bring the Travel Channel out to Caddo Lake this fall; we’ll take them into Jefferson.”
“This is why we embrace Bigfoot,” she said. “The conference is an education. The coverage is good! The economic impact is good!”
Woolheater looked up sheepishly. “You know, I got a call recently from Athens. The head of tourism said she wanted me to move the convention there.”
Rubbing her hands together playfully, Wakefield-Chitwood said, “Can you give me this woman’s name?”
OF COURSE, SUPPORT IS NICE. But in the end, it means little to the faithful, whose determination to find Bigfoot is unflagging. They don’t wait for grants; they are comfortable taking the research responsibilities into their own hands. Almost every weekend Colyer and two others follow up on reports of sightings. And about three times a year six to ten TBRC field investigators go on a four-day-long “field study” and record their findings.
The thrill of these studies cannot be overstated. Imagine Ahab seeking Moby Dick. Usually, the group heads to a remote location in the Piney Woods where the creature has been spotted by someone in the TBRC Web circle. (To elude pranksters, locations of the studies are kept top secret.) During the day, the group looks for tracks, hair, scat, and “nestlike areas.” They set up camp. They sleep. And when the sun sets, they gear up. Smearing themselves in scent blocker, dressed in camouflage, they split up into groups of two or three with devices that would make the most die-hard Cabela’s devotee turn to Jell-O: night vision goggles, NightShot cameras, a call blaster that emits gibbon sounds, plaster for footprint casts, a video recorder, a minidisc recorder, bionic ears, walkie-talkies, and boom microphones. They also bring along special “pheromone chips” designed to entice the ape.
What the investigators report is mixed. Sometimes they go for days without hearing or seeing anything but the woods. Other times, they say, an animal they believe to be Bigfoot tries to intimidate them, grunting and screaming and snapping twigs. Some nights it seems more cooperative. “On a field study last year,” Colyer said, “I was with one other guy. We waited for the sun to go down in San Jacinto County. Around seven-thirty, we blasted three yells. I stood up, and the creature returned an aggressive call from within a hundred yards. It was so close! I thought I was going to have to get my weapon. But then we didn’t hear anything the rest of the night.”
All the pheromone chips and call blasters in the world don’t seem to be luring Sasquatch out of hiding. In the six weekend investigations held over the past two years, the TBRC has recorded three good “vocalizations” and made plaster casts of six footprints. They don’t intend to ever shoot a Bigfoot if they find one, but right now they haven’t even gotten close enough to have the option. “We’ll get it on video,” Colyer said.
“I’ve devoted a lot of time to this,” said Woolheater. “Even good video wouldn’t be the final piece of the puzzle. If someone got a live specimen, I think I’d finally be vindicated. The ultimate proof is going to come.”
BEFORE I LEFT JEFFERSON, Woolheater took me down to a pier on Caddo Lake, a swampy area where the Spanish moss hangs down in thick curtains. “It always follows the waterways,” Woolheater said. It was about eleven-thirty at night, and the toads’ rickit croaks swelled to compete with the cicadas’ strident drone. Everything that had been asleep was now awake, and everything that had been awake was asleep. It was a different world, one that made you jump at every twig’s snap. We walked out onto the dark pier, where tree roots protruded like fingers along the lake bed. All we saw that night were lily pads and black water and woods and shadows. But a Bigfoot hunter is never disappointed. On the way home, Woolheater turned on his brights and leaned forward in his seat, keeping his eyes on the side of the road.
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