Southwestern Arkansas
My regular readers know how much I love Bigfoot, Yeti, and all of the other cryptids out there. They might even know that I’ve visited Fouke, AR, in the past and blogged about it here. While own my recent trip to northwestern Louisiana to see KISS with my son, we decided to take a sidequest north to Fouke, Arkansas, home of the Fouke Monster and the film, The Legend of Boggy Creek.
Sporting my Ghoultown shirt (I’ll get to their connection to Fouke in a bit), my son and I drove into Fouke on Saturday morning. The drive up there was beautiful but we didn’t get to see the Fouke Monster. We stopped at the Monster Mart in town and were blown away by how much the store has changed and yet remained the same since our last visit in 2014.
The convenience store itself had changed very little. It’s a standard convenience store with soft drinks, snacks, and a few roadside necessities for purchase. On the museum side, however, things had been expanded upon greatly. A large display that included a Fouke Monster and one of its children had been added to the museum, as well as two display cases full of photos, albums, footprint casts, and more items related to the Fouke Monster and the history of the small town. There were also newspaper articles lining the walls and a gift shop that featured books, t-shirts, caps, postcards, magnets, mugs, and much, much more.
I talked with the lady behind the counter for quite awhile. She told me a little bit about the upgrades on the store and I also learned that Fouke won their high school football game on the prior evening.
I ended up purchasing a magnet and Lyle Blackburn’s Beyond Boggy Creek book at the Monster Mart. You can read my review of one of Blackburn’s other books, The Legend of Boggy Creek, here. Yes, I could have purchased the book on Amazon or even directly from Lyle’s website, but that would have meant that I couldn’t have purchased the book with the Monster Mart stamp on the inside. I plan to get Mr. Blackburn to sign the book if I ever get the chance to meet him.
Oh, and for anyone still not sure about the connection between Fouke and my Ghoultown band t-shirt, Blackburn is the frontman from the Texas-based gothabilly band. I’ve become quite a fan in recent months. Check out their website here.
After making my purchase, my son and I drove around Fouke for a few minutes before heading on to Texarkana, TX. We had no real destination in mind when we arrived there, we just wanted to kill a little more time before heading to Bossier City, LA to see KISS on Saturday evening.
If you have any interest in cryptozoology and want to visit a key location in Bigfoot history, make a trip to Fouke, AR. You’ll learn about the beast, the movie that made it famous, and the wonderful little town that became the focal point of one of cryptozoology most famous cult films.
Thanks for reading. Check out the links and keep an eye out for my next post.
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