One of the most popular areas for Bigfoot sightings is the southeastern Oklahoma community of Honobia. In October 2006, a documentary film crew from Kansas visited Cherokee and Adair counties to interview the local citizenry about sightings and engage in a Bigfoot hunt with the Green Country Bigfoot Research Center. Afterward, they traveled to Honobia, near Talahina, for that community’s annual Bigfoot festival.

In July 2008, a woman living in an area known as Murphy’s Hill, near 14-Mile Creek, said she was receiving a curious and regular visitor that was “getting bolder” and “coming out in the daytime.” She said one “Sunday afternoon the wind shifted, and we smelled it.” She said she went into the yard and found the door to her dogs’ pen broken almost in half. And, that the dogs get really quiet when this thing is around. The previous February, a friend had moved into the trailer next to hers and soon after, he said he heard a deep, low growl and something shook his trailer. One evening the two of them were outside when they saw something tall and furry run between the trailers. They went inside and shortly heard a bang on the door and the sound of heavy footsteps running away.

This creature has lived in Oklahoma for generations. There are old stories among the Cheyenne of seeing the wild man traveling with the herds of buffalo. The old Cherokee called it Tsul ‘Kalu – the slant-eyed or sloping giant.

The Chickasaw chief Tishomingo hinted at the humanity of the Sasquatch: “Why do you want to hunt the wild men? My children, they are a tribe even as are we. They have families, hunt, fish, and procreate. Leave them alone and they will leave us alone.” The Comanche chief War Shield agreed, but added a dire warning: “Nothing that is said, or accused toward the hairy brothers of the forests, will cause them to leave their homes; they deal with the round eyes the same as we, they will kill the round eyes to protect their home.”

So, here we are again at the birth of another summer and the search begins anew. In May, a couple of dozen researchers again descended on Oklahoma, hoping to catch a glimpse of Soppy and his “cousins.” Equipped with night-vision goggles, long-range lenses, sensitive audio recorders, and an unshakeable belief in the existence of the yet unproven Bigfoot, they come. They come in cars, they come in campers. ...

Jesse Neel

Tahlequah