They say everything is bigger in Texas. This includes the big foot of a tall tale.
Many cultures have their own regional folktales about elusive cryptids rarely seen by civilized society. The Yeti of the Himalayas, the Loch Ness Monster of Scotland, chupacabras, Mothman, the Jersey Devil, the Fouke Monster, and of course, Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest. However, the Lone Star State seemed to get its own boogeyman in the 1960s in the form of the “Caddo Critter” — allegedly a giant ape-like creature — seen skulking around Caddo and igniting the imagination of the residents.
Clarification feels necessary when discussing Caddo. The first ‘known’ sighting of the hairy beast was in Caddo, TX, a Stephens County ghost town off US Highway 180 between Breckenridge and Mineral Wells. Meanwhile, sightings of a ‘Texas Bigfoot’ have been reported near Caddo Lake on the border between Texas and Louisiana and over 300 miles away from the town of the same name. The stateline-dwelling baddie is a story for another time…
On July 18, 1964 in Stephens County, 72-year old rancher Charlie Gantt claimed to have seen a gorilla-like creature over 7 feet tall and fired his .22 revolver at it 9-10 times with no success taking it down. Locals who knew Gantt insisted he was a truthful man that would not lie about anything, let alone something dangerous.
Local 40-year old John Mitchell claimed he spotted the creature three weeks priors after it wandered around his trailer home and got into a scuffle with his dog. While Mitchell’s wife insists she saw it as well, their friend George Gossett decries “Baloney!”
Another alleged witness to this hairy fiend was nine-year old Gene Couch, who according to his mother, turned “white as a sheet” as they were walking by a pond that July evening. Couch claims he saw the creature show its teeth and growl before running off into the night.
While there weren’t any further definitive sightings, the witness statements were enough to cause a stir in the otherwise sleepy Stephens County town that hot summer. Locals gathered with guns in hopes of being the ones to conquer the beast. Word spread around the region about the seven-foot behemoth covered in hair, with citizens of Haskell claiming they had seen a mysterious creature wandering around within a 60-mile radius. Could their ‘Haskell Rascal’ be the Caddo Critter?
“Let the imaginers and the liars run the show for you from here. They will think of things you never would’ve and they will give you greater mobility – you can be seen in three or four places at once.”
The “Caddo Critter” addressing the Milam County Monster
The paranoia among the believers gave opportunity to tricksters. A young boy from Arlington was convinced he had photographic proof of the monster, only to learn that it was a prank by his friends. C.L. Yarbrough contributed to the joke with this whopper of an interview: [News Clip: Caddo Critter] – All Clips The Portal to Texas History and proceeded to stoke the fire with this letter submitted on behalf of the Caddo Critter calling out the “Milam County Monster” for being an unimpressive excuse for a boogeyman:
Skeptics theorized that the Caddo Critter was an animal that escaped a zoo or a game conservation on Possum King Lake. Despite comparisons to a gorilla, farmer Harold Cook believed that it was actually a yak that has been seen grazing alongside his livestock by deer hunter Bobby Wilson. On July 24th, 1964, Bob Cooke of the Abilene Reporter-News sketched what he believed the true ‘Caddo Critter’ culprit looked like:
Perhaps the hairy menace eventually mastered walking upright?
Over a decade later, the monster in question headed 82 miles west and restarted the rumor mill in Hawley, TX.
In the summer of 1977, three teenagers shot at a mysterious ape-like creature that was throwing rocks before diving into a thorny brush of oak trees the locals called the “chinry,” leaving large barefoot tracks along the terrain. The story immediately spread, and folks were quick to recollect the tales of the “Haskell Rascal” from years prior and began drawing connections to the “Caddo Critter”, and now the “Hawley Him,” believing that the monster could be triangulating the regions looking for livestock to devour.
Children at the Hawley First Baptist Church Vacation Bible School were encouraged to submit what they believed the “Hawley Him” looked like. This kid’s interpretation is pretty punk rock.
There has yet to be a conclusive explanation for this beastly phenomenon. Are Him, the Critter, and the Rascal one in the same? Was it a gorilla or yak or madman? An illusion or a hoax? A simple misunderstanding exacerbated by bored, imaginative folks in the midst of Cold War paranoia? Whatever the truth may be, the legends have endured over the decades and continue to fascinate fans of folktales and cryptids. Don’t stop believing, y’all.
For the up-and-coming monsters out there, perhaps the Bonded Organization of Outrageous Gentlemen for Environmental Rampages or BOOGER is still taking new members.
