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Monster sighting solidifies Fouke's spot in annals of lore
By LES MINOR of the Gazette Staff
June 24, 2001
It was 30 years ago that the reported sighting
of a large creature about 10 miles south of Texarkana near Fouke, Ark., made headlines.
This was not the first strange
"monster" sighting in this part of the country, but it became the most famous.
It turned the national spotlight on
the region and even inspired a movie, "The Legend of Boggy Creek," that turned a small fortune on a modest investment.
The
tales that stemmed from the sightings developed lives of their own, and the details that survived are now more fiction than
fact.
As a result, many who have heard about the Fouke Monster dismiss it with a nod and a wink.
Yet news
reports and first-hand accounts at the time describe a much different scene.
The Hollywood embellishments were absent
then and the details were scant, but the fear of those who lived it was real.
The Fouke Monster will always place a
distant second in notoriety to the Phantom Killer, a serial murderer that terrorized Texarkana in the 1940s.
Yet in
its own way, the Fouke Monster has left an indelible mark on the region, and still attracts the attention of certain national
and international audiences. Indeed, Arkansas is a fixture on the map of Sasquatch, or Bigfoot sightings, largely because
of the Fouke Monster.
USA Today lists Fouke in its 10 top places to find a monster.
While the existence of
the Fouke Monster will always be questioned, its impact cannot be. We hope today's package of stories brings together some
of the more interesting elements of this phenomenon.
http://www.texarkanagazette.com/archives/index.inn?loc=detail&doc=/2001/June/24-216-news05.txt
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