Lyle Blackburn

For those who do not live in Texas, what comes to mind when it’s mentioned? Deserts, plateaus, maybe the southern edge of the Great Plains and its prairies? All places one doesn’t associate with Sasquatch/Bigfoot, but all those locations are in the western part of the state and the eastern part of the state is very wet and woody. Texas Bigfoot by Lyle Blackburn sees the author tackle the legendary stories and modern-day encounters of the Lone Star state.

In roughly 230 pages, Blackburn covers many encounters of Texas residents coming across evidence of some other bipedal inhabitant of their state. While most of the book focuses on the eastern portion of the state, which sees almost a dozen rivers either flow into the Gulf of Mexico or eventually into the Mississippi, Blackburn surprises with a few reported sightings in the far west of the state that are hard to explain away. Blackburn, a Texas native, had only touched a little of the state’s history of Sasquatch encounters in a previous publication and lightly into the northeast corner of the state when discussing Boggy Creek in his first book. While Blackburn retreads some territory, he overall focuses on incidents he had never written about before to keep this book unique and doesn’t overdue the drive-by sightings like in another publication. Given the author’s easy to read prose plus all the informative encounters, this was another great read.

Texas Bigfoot explores the history of Sasquatch in the Lone Star State that Lyle Blackburn brought together from old news reports, Bigfoot research groups, and personal investigations to allow readers to come to their own conclusions.… (mehr)

The small town of Louisiana, Missouri had a strange summer in 1972 when a creature put it briefly made it famous, but was it real or fake? Momo: The Strange Case of the Missouri Monster by Lyle Blackburn goes into detail of the two months that the creature made life interesting in corner of the Show Me state.

Over the course of almost 140 pages of text, Blackburn details the strange events that occurred in Louisiana, MO over the course of July and August 1972 as well as the surrounding area along the western side of the Mississippi River with some reports across the river in Illinois as well. Not only does he describe the encounters or sightings of a large, black haired bipedal entity but of footprint finds and the sighting of strange orbs of light around town that just added to the “strangeness” of that summer especially when he gives context to similar things occurring in Pennsylvania that attracted UFO investigators. While Blackburn doesn’t dismiss the possibility of pranks in some of the instances he details in the books—in fact a set of footprints is confessed to being fake—but there are two instances which to him one in July 1971 and the initial incident in July 1972 of the Momo phenomenon that make him believe there is substance to something strange having lived in the area.

Momo: The Strange Case of the Missouri Monster is a fascinating read of how a small town and the surrounding area experienced something weird roaming the area. Lyle Blackburn not only lays out the facts in well-written manner and gives his opinion, but he allows the reader to make up their own mind as well.… (mehr)

Is Boggy Creek, Arkansas the only southern locale of Sasquatch or does it range further afield in the South from Texas to Georgia from Kentucky down to Florida? Beyond Boggy Creek: In Search of the Southern Sasquatch by Lyle Blackburn investigates the historical and the modern history of “boogers”, “wildmen”, and “apes” in the Southern United States.

As Blackburn stated early on that this book was a quasi-sequel to The Beast of Boggy Creek, be began his survey of southern sasquatch hotspots in Fouke, Arkansas then went up the Red River into Oklahoma and Texas then headed eastward until finally finishing with the Skunk Ape in Florida. Blackburn highlighted a string of reports in a particular area during a timeframe or over the course of years to show that these weren’t one-off instances, a lot of times Blackburn would delve into archival newspaper articles from the 1800s and early 1900s of weird creatures appearing that prompted citizens to form a posse that more-often-than-not came up empty. While Blackburn did his very best to not have “modern” incidents that were similar but needed to fill page space had to including reports that seemed to repeat a few times with just the location changing—these were drive-by sightings. Besides this one gripe, this was an interesting read.

Beyond Boggy Creek explores the southern history of Sasquatch that Lyle Blackburn brought through various sources for readers to examine and come to their own conclusion.… (mehr)

One night in early May 1971 brought attention, a lot unwanted, to a 500-person town that eventually became apart of the cultural zeitgeist thanks to surprise blockbuster. The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster by Lyle Blackburn examines the events of 1971 and the surprising aftermath as well as the events long before and up to the present-day to give context to those of early 70s.

Before his examination of the string of incidents, Blackburn gives a physical and cultural background of the Fouke, Arkansas region before incidents that brought the little town to the national monster zeitgeist. Then Blackburn goes right into the 1971 incidents using newspaper accounts and interviews of those directly involved or who investigated them in the aftermath including local law enforcement officers to examine all of them. Blackburn then goes back to previous sightings in time over the course of the previous half-century that occurred in the nearby but equally small Jonesville, including those that involved the family of Smokey Crabtree. Blackburn then examines the events leading up to, during, and aftermath of the filming of The Legend of Boggy Creek including its surprise box office performance—leading to horrible sequels—and cult classic status even today. Blackburn then transitions after the “heyday” of the 1970s to explore if there had been anymore sightings and relating many of them through to and past 2000. The last fifth of the book is dedicated to examining theories of what, if anything, the monster could have been from misidentification to an unknown bipedal ape as well as any incidents of hoaxes, particular with the three-toe foot tracks.

Aside from Florida’s Skunk Ape, Fouke Monster is the essential Southern Bigfoot within the cryptozoological community. Blackburn keeps his focus on events directly in Fouke or connected with it from sightings and interactions to the guerilla-style filmmaking of the surprise smash hit that is based off events within the community. As stated above, Blackburn only really goes into analysis and speculation at the end of the book as the primary focus is on those events in 1971 that created the phenomenon and then if there were any similar events before and after the 70s heyday. The most important thing I found in the book is that Blackburn took years researching this book and traveling to the area so often that it appears those in the community that were suspicious of his motives realized he was not there for a hatch job on the community and were willing to be interviewed, some of them relating events for the first time to an ‘outsider’.

The Beast of Boggy Creek is a thorough look into the early 1970s cryptozoological and box office phenomenon as well the history before and after those defining events. Lyle Blackburn writes in an engaging style the clearly brings the events and facts to the reader so they can come to a informed conclusion of their own.… (mehr)