Bigfoot remains a Texas-size mystery

Web Posted: 11/28/2006 12:52 AM CST

Chris Marrou
KENS 5 Eyewitness News

With 300 million people in this country, it's hard to believe that much of anything could happen in America without someone seeing it.

But there is a sizeable number of people who believe that an entire race of apelike men, or manlike apes — beings who are seen only rarely, if at all — has lived in America's forests and swamps for hundreds of years.

Craig Woolheater describes what he saw on a trip back to Texas.

"It looks like a cross between a man and an ape, upright on two legs covered with hair," Woolheater said. "In 1994, I was driving back to Dallas from New Orleans. It was about 11:30 p.m. at night."

And that's when Woolheater and his girlfriend first saw the creature known as Bigfoot.

"I can't explain it as anything else other than one of these creatures," he said.

Stories like this date back to 1924, with Wild Woman of the Navidad, when a Bigfoot-like creature was seen wandering near the Navidad River Southeast of Hallettsville.

Then in 1969, as people around the world watched the first man land on the moon, folks in Fort Worth were keeping an eye on the Lake Worth Monster, another so-call Texas Bigfoot.

Seven years later, Texas bigfoot stories move a little closer to home when two people in San Antonio claim they saw two creatures that looked like Bigfoot near what was then Kelly Air Force Base.

Are the stories tall tales or is their something bigger than us, but like us out there?

After what Woolheater believes was his first encounter with Bigfoot, he and a team of other believers began checking out hundreds of sightings across the United States.

"My personal opinion is that these are an undiscovered primate that's living here in North America. There not suppose to be any apes here," said.

But maybe there are.

Filmmakers Deuane Graves and Justin Meeks are working on a movie titled "The Wild Man of the Navidad," which is based on an old Texas Bigfoot story that's been passed down from generation to generation.

Graves and Meeks met Dale Rogers while doing some research on Texas Bigfoot in Sublime, east of Hallettsville.

"He definitely saw something. I don't know what, but it was definitely something that he couldn't explain," Grave said.

"In his journals, through the illustrations and the writings, and etc. I guess he felt it was time, and he wanted someone to do something with it," Meeks said.

But even after doing their movie, Graves and Meeks say they are not 100 percent convinced Texas Bigfoot is real.

Maybe after watching this story, you're not convinced.

But Woolheater is and has been ever since that dark night on a road to Texas in 1994.

"I have my own personal experience that I cannot erase. That for me says there's something out there."