During the past year or so, I’ve heard all sorts of unusual
local Bigfoot stories, but I learned recently that a Bigfoot story out of
Conecuh County was actually featured on a TV show about 15 years ago.
Episode 2 of Season One of a show called “Mysterious
Encounters” features a family from Conecuh County who claimed to have had a
wide variety of encounters with what they called a “booger monster.” During the
episode, which originally aired on Oct. 4, 2003 on the Outdoor Life Network,
the family describes the “monster,” which sounds just like a classic Bigfoot.
It’s a tall, giant-sized, hairy creature that makes a general nuisance of
itself around the family home.
During the episode, investigators led by cryptozoologist Autumn
Williams, visit the Harris family home in the Janes Mill community during
Easter weekend 2003 and look into all the “monster” sighting claims made by the
family and others. The Janes Mill community is located in southwest Conecuh
County, not far from the Escambia County line.
I watched the episode closely on Saturday and was surprised
to recognize two of the other investigators – Vince Lauria and Matt Moneymaker.
Many of you who have been following the local Bigfoot news recently may remember
that Lauria, who lives in Escambia County, was among the first people who
showed up when the Southwest Alabama Bigfoot Hunters held their organizational
meeting in Evergreen last year. Vince, an investigator with the Bigfoot Field
Researchers Organization (BFRO), told me on Saturday that he was the field
producer for the TV show.
Matt Moneymaker, as many Bigfoot enthusiasts will know, is the
star of the popular Animal Planet TV show, “Finding Bigfoot,” which is currently
in its ninth season. Moneymaker is the founder and president of the BFRO and is
arguably the most famous Bigfoot investigator in the country. The fact that he
came to Conecuh County to investigate reported Bigfoot sightings is very
significant in my book.
The “Mysterious Encounters” episode features interviews with
a number of witnesses, but as best that I could tell, only two of them were
named, Louise Harris and Mark Baker. All of the witnesses describe seeing or
hearing a strange creature in and around their family home, and they even
provide researchers with a hair sample that was examined by Dr. Henner
Fahrenbach, a professional zoologist. His examination determined that the Janes
Mill hair sample belonged to an “unknown primate.”
“Mysterious Encounters” apparently only lasted one season.
Other episodes featured the Florida Skunk Ape, the Louisiana Swamp Creature,
the Creature of Whitehall, the Creature of Cumberland, the Tsiako Beast, the
Bigfoot of Bluff Creek, the Oklahoma Wildman, the Redwood Forest Giant, the
Texas Thicket Monster and others.
If you’re interested in watching the Conecuh County episode
of “Mysterious Encounters,” the entire episode can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb1-8ugo-AU.
(If you don’t want to type in that long Web address, just do a search for the
“Alabama Booger Monster,” and it should come up at the top of the results.) In
all, the episode, which doesn’t contain any of the original commercial breaks,
is nearly 21 minutes long.
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