The interviewer’s comments are denoted through initials JK, while the interviewee’s responses are denoted through initials MB.

MB: The one I remember growing up with they used to scare us with the Legend of Boggy Creek.  It was not in our area, it was by Fouke, Arkansas.  F-O-U-K-E Arkansas.  And um- so this guy claims that he was attacked in his home by a umm, like a big hairy, 7 foot guy, like a big hairy man.  Long arms, kinda like half ape, half man.  And he went to the hospital and he did have a bunch of scratches and cuts, and he was in shock.  He was treated for all those things.  So this was like in the 70s actually, so I don’t know how folklore it is, but his neighbors said that they had seen some things, they had heard some rustling around his home and so they weren’t disputing his claims.  They even said they had shot the thing, but they never saw any blood, and couldn’t find it after they had fired.  But nobody else could really believe the guy, but when people went back to his house there were these strange claw marks all over the guys front door and front porch and everything.  And I think they ended up making a documentary movie out of it.  I’m pretty sure they did.  So that used to scare us all the time.

JK: So was that near your place in Hot Springs?

MB: No, it was Boggy Creek in Fouke which is a lot further south, closer to Texas and Louisiana.

On sleepovers and bunking parties we’d all talk about it.  It was just a ghost story, but it had enough truth to it it wasn’t a ghost story to us, you know?  I think it was also called the Fouke Monster.  Just like this sasquatch like creature that would haunt all these creeks in Southern Arkansas.  So he would just hang out in the creek system.  And you know why that was so scary for us to?  Because we had a creek running underneath our house, our first house, so that was pretty scary.

Conclusion:

This sounded like a classic monster story.  The informant, an Arkansas native, admitted to me that she thinks there are more stories of monsters in the south than there are up north– where she currently resides.  I asked her why she believed this and she told me it’s because people are “a little crazier down that way.”  I liked how this legend gained steam in the minds of the informant and her friends when they would talk about it at sleepovers.  I think getting psyched out with your friends over a monster story at young age is something anyone can relate to.