© Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research OrganizationThis picture shows the farm on Md.Ridge Rd. where the 11 month encounter took place. In it a witness talks to State Police about his terrifying experiences with the creature(s).
It's merely Bigfoot, a.k.a. Sasquatch or Yeti, who has snuck into town to enjoy the music, eat some red beans and rice, and watch folks lose their inhibitions and break into impromptu dance.
He won't be displaying any fancy footsteps himself because he'll be attempting to keep a fairly low profile. As low a profile, that is, as a super-tall, 500-pound critter can keep.
According to the 11 registered Bigfoot sightings in Henderson County since 1997, the visitor's thick, all-over hair might be various shades of brown, white, or black. In an earlier account, it was dark green.
We figure he might come to the festival because he or his cousins have, after all, been reported all over this county from Reed to Smith Mills, and sighting descriptions just keep on coming on the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Group's website: www.bigfootkentucky.com.
No, I've never personally caught a glimpse of the being said to have no visible ears, be somewhat stoop-shouldered, and grunt like a pig.
But, on second thought, I think I might have been set up on a blind date with him once. He had no table manners whatsoever, a very limited vocabulary, and kept wanting to borrow my hairbrush.
Obviously, I'm making light of the legend that persists not only in this county and state, but all over the nation and in various other parts of the world.
Some people, though, take it very seriously and I suppose if I'd ever had a Bigfoot sighting, I would too.
Bart Nunnelly, the lead investigator for the state Bigfoot Research Group, a few years ago wrote a book called "Mysterious Kentucky" which explores the Bigfoot mystique as well as other strange happenings.
Bart told Gleaner reporter Frank Boyett that his family had been terrorized by "the Spottsville monster" when he was a youngster in that community.
"I was forced to be a believer from a young age when all this stuff happened to my own family," he said, noting that the Nunnellys had lost 16 chickens and a goat to a being with dark green fur.
Bart interviews those who report sightings and keeps track of how many sightings each Kentucky county has had since '97. Anderson County ties with Henderson County at 11 reports, and Carter County has had the most: 13. Four sightings are listed for Union County, and none for Webster County.
The most recent report here is said to have occurred on March 12 this year in an area just off Wathen Lane.
Three youths who were fishing in a pond said a noise was first heard, and then the creature was seen standing on the far side of the pond.
Bart took their account and wrote, "I've found that children are less apt to lie than adults, more often than not."
In September, 2010, a lone motorist was driving down Baskett Lane right before dusk when he reportedly observed a large figure standing upright next to some trees in a small thicket.
The motorist said the creature, who was estimated at between seven and eight feet tall, stared right back at him for a time and then disappeared into the woods.
Then there's an April, 2009 account from a woman who lives near 136-West.
She said she heard a strange howling in the evening and when she went outside to try and identify the source, she saw an outline of a huge figure in the pasture next door.
Her pit bull, apparently not usually afraid of much, "whimpered and got down on her belly and crawled back into the house...She refused to go back outside for over an hour."
A check of some previous Associated Press Bigfoot accounts included a story about two Georgia men who claimed to have the corpse of a Bigfoot encased in a block of ice, found in the mountains of North Georgia.
They sold it to two Bigfoot researchers, who discovered when the ice was melted that it was a rubber gorilla suit.
The perpetrators were identified as a county police officer and a retired corrections officer.
For the record, famed, award-winning primatologist Jane Goodall reportedly has read "countless books" about Bigfoot and said she's keeping an open mind.
As one AP account concluded, "And the mystery lives on."
i think that bigfoot is what we'd all look like if "somebody" hadn't come along and refried our strands